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Christian Science 

An Exposition of Mrs. Eddy's Wonderful Discov- 
ery, including its Legal Aspects 

A Plea for Children and other 
Helpless Sick 



BV 

WILLIAM A. PURRINGTON 

Lecturer in the University and Bellevue Hospital Medical College y and 

in the New York College of Dentistry upon Law in Relation 

to Medical Practice, one of the Authors of 

"A System of Legal Medicine" 



NEW YORK 

E B. TREAT & COMPANY 

241-243 West 230 Street 
1900 



•"Tg 



u Christian Science demonstrates that the patient who pays whatever he 
is able to pay for being healed is more apt to recover than he who with- 
holds a slight equivalent for health." 

— From Preface to Miscellaneous Writings of Mrs. Eddy. 



TWO COPIES RECEIVED, 

Library af Conge$#% 
Offfc* of tN 

m 2- 1900 

RegUter of Copyrights 

53793 



Copyright 

By E. B. Treat & Co 

1900 



SECOND COPY, 






PREFACE. 

It has seemed worth while to collect these papers, 
expounding the dangerous teachings of our latter-day 
delusion, Christian Science, and the theory and limita- 
tions of medical legislation, if only for the sake of 
children and helpless adults. Thanks are due to the 
Proprietor and Editors of the North American Review 
for permission to reprint the articles written for that 
periodical at the instance of my friend David A. 
Munro, Esq., and to the publisher and editor of the 
Medical Record, and the New York Sun for the use 
of the matter copyrighted by them. They have 
proved less tenacious of their copyrights than is the 
discoverer of Christian Science of hers. 

The papers have not been altered from their origi- 
nal form in order to avoid in the bound volume 
repetitions due to treating the same subject before 
different audiences. When line upon line and precept 
upon precept are needed repetitions are not vain. 

Four of these papers deal with the exposition of 
Mrs. Eddy's teachings, her own account of herself and 
the status of her cult before the law. Another treats 
of the educational effect and policy of medical legisla- 
tion, and the last shows how by enforcement of medical 
laws not consonant with public opinion the apothecary 
in England became a general practitioner of medicine. 

The best proof that the articles in the Worth Ameri- 
can Review are fair expositions of Mrs. Eddy's biogra- 
phy and teachings is that their accuracy has not been 
denied, so far as their author knows. How could it 
be when they consist for the most part of her own 
words quoted by book and page so that error might 

3 



4 CHBISTIAN SCIENCE. 

be easily corrected? No willful misstatement has 
been made, and none, it is believed, unwittingly. The 
patient reader w r ill see that there is here no denial, 
but rather explicit and repeated admissions of the ex- 
traordinary influence of suggestion, expectant atten- 
tion and mental excitation however caused upon the 
body. It is not denied that hysterical patients, the 
morbidly introspective, the worriers, the malades im- 
aginaires, the victims of obscure nervous ailments 
have been helped by Faith Cure, Christian Science, 
Mental Healing, Mesmerism, Hypnotism, Vitapathy, 
and the like. But it is denied that every post hoc is a 
propter hoc, and that because, for instance, asthma, 
which often yields to a change of residence, or wears 
out by lapse of time, and childbirth, a normal func- 
tion, sometimes run successful courses under such 
methods, therefore gross ignorance and presumption 
are to be substituted without restraint or liability in 
daily life for demonstrably efficient skill and science. 
We know that a surgeon can staunch the gush of 
blood from a severed artery, that the physician has 
sweet oblivious antidotes for pain, and, if called in 
time, can, often counteract the deadly work of poison. 
Eddyism cannot do these things. Will Mrs. Eddy or 
any of her disciples venture by personal experiment 
under test conditions to prove that Christian Science 
can counteract by its arguments the effects of mor- 
phine, atropine or strychnine ? 

What must be obvious to any one who will think 
but a moment is that suggestion, expectant attention 
and such mental stimuli cannot operate upon babies 
&s tkey do upon adults ; and accordingly, as one would 



PEEFACE. 5 

naturally expect, we find some of the most horrible 
instances of criminal wickedness on the part of Chris- 
tian Scientists, Peculiar People and like faddist in 
their treatment of children. One object lesson is 
worth a wilderness of words, and the photograph 
prefixed to these papers is a volume in itself. I am 
indebted for its use to Charles H. Tag, M. D., of 
Brooklyn. The case, referred to on page 113, was 
one of gangrene of the left foot of a child twelve years 
old ; the lower ends of tibia and fibula being exposed 
and the foot attached to the leg only by the internal 
lateral ligaments of the ankle. Physicians advised am- 
putation ; but an ignorant woman was called in who 
guaranteed by prayers, passes and salves to effect a 
cure. She professed belief in Christian Science and 
mental treatment, but also in the efficacy of remedies, 
the use of which made her conviction possible under 
the law of New York. She was not a strict Eddyite, 
but had a system and book of her own. Eventually 
amputation was performed by Dr. Blaisdell assisted 
by Drs. Tag and Caffrey. The operation was success- 
ful and the child is now in good health. Is it not 
horrible to think of cases of this sort, of contagious 
diseases, of severed arteries and fractured limbs falling 
into the hands of ignorant and audacious " Scientists " 
even when patients are conscious and willing to accept 
the treatment? How much worse it is when the 
patients are little children or unconscious adults 
whose lives are put by misguided kin or friends into 
the deadly keeping of those who lightly and boldly 
assume with ignorance, what the learned attempt 
with care and misgiving. 



6 CHKISTIAN SCIENCE. 

The questions submitted to Mr. Carol Norton as set 
out in the appendix remain unanswered by him. 
They are the crux of Eddyism. Would Mrs. Eddy 
treat her own severed artery by arguing with it like 
a congressman? Would Mr. Norton discuss a fish- 
bone out of a child's throat ? If not, who will deny 
that the pretensions of the cult are humbug and sham 
of the commonest, wickedest sort ? 

It is by no means asserted that the disciples of Mrs. 
Eddy are ignorant or unintelligent. On the contrary 
their sincerity is willingly admitted, as well as that 
among them are persons of unusual intelligence. But 
persons of intelligence and honesty, ever since the 
world began, have been deluded in amazing fashions 
by vulgar and ignorant impostors in religion, medicine 
and finance. Hope tells its flattering tale to rich and 
poor, wise and foolish. All conditions of men blindly 
follow false beacons of health and wealth, set for them 
by fanaticism, greed and cunning. Fortunate are they 
who find the true light before shipwreck. 

If this exposition turns one Ephraim from his idols ; 
if it saves one child, one woman in peril of childbirth, 
one strong man in delirium from unnecessary suffering 
and death at the hands of the ignorant and criminally 
reckless, it will not have been written in vain. And 
because it may happen that some reader might wish 
to find again a droll absurdity of Christian Science's 
discoverer wherewith to confound him who accepts 
Mrs. Eddy's teaching on faith without knowledge, a 
sufficiently copious index has been made, and a table 
given of the cases cited from law reports. 

W. A, PUKKINGTON, 

jg Wall Street, New York City, 
Pecctqber Jith x j8gq, 



Contents 



CHAPTER PAGE 

Table of Cases Cited 10 

I. Christian Science and its Legal Aspects 1 1 

II. The Case Against Christian Science 37 

III. Manslaughter, Christian Science and the Law 69 

IV. Christian Science before the Law 91 

V. How Far can Legislation Aid in Maintaining a Proper Stand- 
ard of Medical Education 123 

VI. The Evolution of the Apothecary . 145 



APPENDIX 

A. The Claims of Christian Science 165 

B. Christian Science and the Law . . 175 

Index 183 



ILLUSTRATIONS 
Photograph of child treated by incantations and salves . . . Frontispiece 
Copy of Charter of Massachusetts Metaphysical College . . 8 



Table of Reported Cases Cited in this Book 



Apothecaries Co. v. Nottingham, 34 L. T. R 

(N. S.) 76 . 
Apothecaries Co. v. Lottinga, 2 M. & R. 500 
11 " " Harrison, 67 L. T 



PAGES 



232 . 
College 

757 



148 



Attorney-General ex rel. Apoth. Co. v 
of Physicians, 30 L. J. (N. S.) Ch. 

Bailey v. Mogg, 4 Den. 60 

Bibber v. Simpson, 59 Me. 181 . 

Commonwealth vs. Thomson, 6 Mass. 134 

Corsi v. Maretzek, 4 E. D. Smith 1 

Davison v. Bohlman, 37 Mo. App. 576 

Dent v. U. S., 129 U. S. 114 

Eastman v. State, 6 Ohio, Dec. 296 

Eastman v. People, 71 111. App. 236 

Eastman v. State, 10 N. E. Rep. 97 

Handey v. Henson, 4 C. & P. 110 

Marsh v. Davison, 9 Paige 580 

Morgan v. Hallen, 8 Ad. & El. 119 

Mormon Case, (Reynolds v. U. S.) 

Nelson v. Harrington, 72 Wis. 591 

Pierce v. Commonwealth, 138 Mass. 165 

People v. Phippin, 70 Mich. 6 . 

Regina v. Wagstaffe, 10 Cox. Cr. Cas. 530 

44 Senior, L. T. & L. J.; Dec. 17, 1898 

Rice v. State, 8 Mo. 561 . 

Rex v. Long, 4 C. & P. 398 

Revnolds v. U. S., 98 U. S. 145 . 

Rose v. College of Physicians, 3 Salk 17 ; 6 Mod 

44 ; 5 Bro. Pari 553. . . 133, 152, 154, 155 

Smith v. Lane, 24 Hnn. 632 . . 79, 106, 110, 153, 177 

State v. Buswell, 40 Neb. 158 . . . 82 

" " Mylod, 49 Atl. 753 . . 16,84,85,116 

" " Schulz, 55 Iowa 628 . . . 75 

Toune v. Lady Gresley, 3 C. & P. 581 . . 155 

10 



154 



-159 
160 
160 



158 

75 

81 

31,71,112 

134 

81 

14 

81 

82 

80 

155 

74 

155 

30,86,173 

81 

31,76 

81 

87 

88 

74 

31, 88 

30,86 



Christian Science. 



" CHEISTIAIST SCIENCE " AND ITS LEGAL ASPECTS. 1 

It is asked if existing laws impose any restraint 
upon treatment of the sick by soi-disant " Christian 
Scientists," and if further legislation in that regard is 
desirable. 

Mere charlatanism, unrelated to the general wel- 
fare, is not a proper subject for legislation, but quack- 
ery imperilling the public health is. Whether 
Christian Science falls within either category, every 
intelligent reader will readily determine when aware 
of its pretences — charlatanism being false pretension 
to knowledge, skill, power or achievement, and every 
one being a charlatan who falsely advertises himself 
as achieving greater results than his fellows, whether 
he be a medical man boasting of mysterious and im- 
possible cures, a religious teacher preaching what he 
does not believe, or a lawyer proclaiming achieve- 
ments that he has not accomplished or insuring re- 
sults beyond his power. The term is not used offen- 
sively, nor with any desire to impute insincerity to 
honest believers in this new cult. 

1 From the North American Review > March 1899. 
11 



12 CHKISTIAN SCIEKCE. 

To answer the questions propounded, we must 
clearly understand, (1) the true purpose and proper 
scope of legislative control over medical practice and 
matters affecting the public health ; (2) the methods 
taught and adopted for the treatment of the sick by 
Christian Scientists; (3) the status of these people 
under existing law. 

For the argument's sake let these concessions be 
made at the outset : (1) mental stimulus exercises, 
and has been always known to exercise, enormous in- 
fluence over the body, whether incited by such slight 
causes as " a harmless, necessary cat," or " woollen bag- 
pipe," or by such powerful emotions as hope, fear or 
faith; and not only malades imaginaires, but sick 
persons, especially those afflicted with hysterical dis- 
orders, have been and will be restored to normal 
health by such stimulus ; (2) the wisest physicians, as 
they will be first to admit, not having yet attained 
the limits of medical or psychical knowledge, are 
fallible, and often make errors of diagnosis ; (3) the 
vis medicatrix naturae is great, and, if there should 
be called to the treatment of a sick man two ignorant 
and incompetent persons, one a gloomy believer in dos- 
ing by rule, the other merely a cheerful prophet, the 
latter would be, probably, the more helpful, or at least 
the less dangerous ; (4) Socrates, Galileo, Jenner and 
many other persons met with opposition in promulgat- 
ing truth, just as Simon, the sorcerer, Jack Cade, 
Cagliostro and other impostors eventually came to 
grief in their propaganda of lies. 

These concessions are made because, in the writer's 
experience, no charlatan or enthusiast has yet appeared 



ITS LEGAL ASPECTS. 13 

before a legislative committee to plead for the substi- 
tution of ignorance in place of medical learning, whose 
argument has not been, in substance, this : There are 
mysterious powers not possessed or fully understood 
by physicians, who frequently make grave mistakes ; 
cures often follow the ministrations of clairvoyants, 
mediums, mind and faith curers ; new truth is always 
opposed; therefore, medical practice should be un- 
trammelled, and every one, regardless of character, 
intelligence, education or training, should be permitted 
to engage in the business of treating the sick for hire. 
A postulate must also be laid down, and he who denies 
it need read no further ; the acceptance of new doc- 
trines, or of old ideas revamped, by a large number of 
persons, of whom some may be very intelligent, is not 
of itself sufficient reason for general acceptance of 
such doctrines or ideas, or for toleration of practices 
founded upon them ; especially if the former be con- 
trary to ordinary experience and observation, and the 
latter be injurious to the public health, morals or 
safety. It was happily said by Dr. Oliver "Wendell 
Holmes, of Bishop Berkeley's belief in tar water as a 
specific for pretty nearly all the ills of man, that it 
" exhibits the entire insufficiency of exalted wisdom, 
immaculate honesty, and vast general acquirements to 
make a good physician of a great bishop ; " while, of 
Berkeley himself, the wise and witty Doctor said : 
" He was an illustrious man, but he held two very odd 
opinions ; that tar water was everything and that the 
material universe was nothing." 

Public health laws, including therein statutes regu- 
lating medical practice, should be and are framed 



14 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 

solely to protect the public, by providing against such 
harmful practices as adulterations of food and drugs, 
the spread of contagious diseases, maintenance of un- 
sanitary conditions and medical treatment of the sick 
by unqualified persons. That the state may constitu- 
tionally and justly exercise its police power to protect 
health is by adjudication established beyond cavil, and 
by common consent so thoroughly accepted that if a 
pest-house or open cess-pool were established near the 
residence of the founder of Christian Science, she 
would doubtless apply, successfully, to the Courts or 
the Health Board to abate the nuisance, notwithstand- 
ing her teaching that a " calm Christian state of mind 
is a better preventive of contagion than a drug, or any 
possible sanative method." l The justification of med- 
ical licensing laws is that the overwhelming majority 
of sensible men, at all times, have believed that knowl- 
edge and training are essential to qualify a man to 
cope with disease ; and, for this reason, the highest 
courts of many States and the Supreme Court of the 
United States, in Dent's case, 2 have affirmed the con- 
stitutional power of a State to enact laws forbidding 
unqualified persons to practice medicine, and establish- 
ing general tests of such qualification. 

This is not the occasion to review the Medical Acts 
of the several States. It is enough to say that none 
of them prohibits or prescribes any special system of 
therapeutics or practice. To do that would block 

1 Misc. Works, p. 229. Where in these foot notes only a page is cited 
the reference is to " Science and Healthy with Key to the Scriptures" the 
text-book of the cult, edition of 1887. 

2 Dent v. West Virginia, 129 U. S. 114. 



ITS LEGAL ASPECTS. 15 

scientific progress and discourage investigation. It is 
not for legislatures to say how either bodies or souls 
shall be cured, to enact pharmacopoeias into statutes 
or crystallize theories, medical or religious, into law. 
But it is entirely right and proper for them to declare 
that no man shall enter upon the business of treating 
the sick until he is of full age and has shown, upon 
examination, that he has studied for a prescribed time, 
and acquired competent knowledge of those branches 
of true science, familiarity with which is, by universal 
consent, necessary to equip one into whose hands life 
and health are to be committed — physiology, anatomy, 
surgery, obstetrics, hygiene, chemistry, pathology, di- 
agnosis. The licensed medical practitioner may act 
in any case upon any theory of therapeutics commend- 
ing itself to his judgment ; allopathy — if there be such 
a theory — homeopathy, hydropathy, electropathy, vi- 
tapathy, venopathy, osteopathy, Baunscheidtismus, 
magnetic healing, the Christian Science of Mrs. Eddy, 
the pagan science of the Yoodoo Queen, or a general 
Eclecticism. 

In short, the law aims, and should aim, to require, 
as the only prerequisite of a medical license, satisfac- 
tory proof that the candidate is of good character and 
average equipment through study and training. In 
New York, for example, there are three Boards of 
Medical Examiners, representing the regular practi- 
tioners, and the Homeopathic and Eclectic Schools. 
Examinations are uniform in physiology, anatomy, and 
all the other branches of science above enumerated, 
wherein there is no medical schism. In therapeutics, 
where opinions diverge, candidates for license may de- 



16 CHEISTIAIST SCIENCE. 

mand examination according to their schools. Rhode 
Island's Supreme Court said lately, in Mylod's case, 1 
by way of reductio ad absurdum, that Christian Scien- 
tists, were they held to be practitioners of medicine, 
would be entitled under the constitution of that State 
to a separate Board of Examiners — offering this as one 
argument for not holding them to be such practition- 
ers. But whv should not Christian Scientists, who 

%j 7 

make a business of attempting to cure the sick, be re- 
quired to submit to examination in general medical 
science, quite as much as homeopaths from whose loins 
they have sprung ; going, as do candidates from other 
schools, before their own board in therapeutics ? It 
is said that they give no drugs, but they must and do 
make diagnosis, 2 and their " Mother " says that they 
often give medicine. 3 Is it unreasonable to infer that 
their actual objections to being classed as medical 
practitioners subject to license are : (1) that to pre- 
pare for examination requires years of study in real 
science ; (2) that no one with a fair knowledge of the 
human economy, and equipped to practice medicine 

1 State v. Mylod, 40 Atl. 753. See the paper " Christian Science before 
the Law," p. 91. 

2 Although Christian Scientists deny, in order to escape prosecution un- 
der medical laws, that they make diagnosis of disease, yet upon their own 
theory they must do so ; for their teacher bids them mentally to address by 
name the disease to be treated, and argue with it. They sometimes call 
"diagnosis " "discernment," and Mrs. Eddy says of herself, " I have dis- 
cerned disease in the human mind, and recognized the patient's fear of it 
many weeks before the so-called disease made its appearance in the body. 
. . . / am never mistaken in my scientific diagnosis of disease" (P. 
194.) 

3 "Departing from my instruction, many learners commend diet and 
hygiene. They even administer medicine for certain diseases^ thinking 
thereby to initiate the cure which they think to complete with mind ! " 

(p- 376.) 



ITS LEGAL ASPECTS. 17 

intelligently, would adopt the vagaries of their pseudo 
science ? 

Such being the purpose and proper scope of medical 
laws, the second inquiry is, What is so-called Chris- 
tian Science? 

The answer may, best and most fairly, be given by 
quoting the very words of the remarkable lady, Mrs. 
Eddy, who, in 1866, made the somewhat belated dis- 
covery of this branch of healing. This is the more 
important because many who, without having read 
the text-book, fancy they know, in a general way, 
what it teaches, would be surprised, on looking into 
the volume, at the vagueness of expression, hopeless 
confusion of thought, vain boasting, complacent asser- 
tion of impossible occurrences, virulent denunciation 
of all other systems, and systematic, commonplace ad- 
vertising that everywhere appear. The publications 
to be quoted from are " Science and Health, with Key 
to the Scriptures" (Edition of 1887, published by the 
author), and " Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896." 
The former, being the text-book wherein the new dis- 
covery is expounded, is read at the church service of 
the Scientist alternately with the Bible, and, if its au- 
thor is to be credited, the mere reading of it, under- 
standing^, has cured and will cure the most malig- 
nant diseases, even cancer, and indeed is the chief 
factor in all treatment. 

At the threshold of this magnum opus, we are told : 
" The time for thinkers has come." 1 Hitherto, the 
world has got along in a thoughtless fashion ; but 
at last the thinkers are upon us — not only those who 

>P. 5 . 



18 CHEISTIAN SCIENCE. 

think they think, but real thinkers ; and it behooves 
us to heed their thought. Perhaps it is this state- 
ment, as much as any other in the book, that gives to 
Christian Science what vogue it has. The more 
ignorant the disciples, the more flattered he is to 
esteem himself a thinker wiser than all who have 
gone before. A cubit is added to his stature and he 
glows with self-satisfaction. When the author wrote 
of the Saviour : " Though Jesus is the impetus and 
pulse of Christianity, yet Christianity is larger than 
its human founder ;"* and again of Bishop Berkeley : 
" He was a great natural Scientist in his day, and held 
opinions concerning ' absolute idealism ' which ad- 
vance his memory near to the border-land of Christian 
Science," 2 she, too, doubtless felt this glow, and failed 
to apprehend in the words what was blasphemous to 
the pious, humorous 3 to the merely instructed and of- 
fensive to good taste. 

Another reason why this text-book impresses the 

i p. 229. 2 p # 230. 

3 The poems of Mrs. Eddy, published in Miscellaneous Writings, Ch. 
XI., afford evidence at once of her literary craftsmanship and of her en- 
tire lack of humor. Two verses from one of them, " Isle of Wight," (p. 
393), may serve to illustrate her pellucid thought and style: 
" Soul, sublime 'mid human debris 
Paints the limner's work, I ween, 
Art and Science, all unweary, 
Lighting up the mortal dream." 



" Students wise, he maketh now thus 
Those who fish in waters deep, 
When the buried Master hails us 
From the shores afar, complete." 
However trite or obscure her prose teachings, no one will deny the 
novelty and originality of rhyming " debris " with " unweary," " ween " 
with "dream," "now thus" with "hails us" and " deep " with " com- 
plete," and, to quote Calverley's saying of other poetry, " As to its mean- 
ing, it's what you please," 



ITS LEGAL ASPECTS. 19 

superficial as containing oracles of wisdom is, that it 
so often, like Dr. Holmes's katydid, says " an undis- 
puted thing in such a solemn way ; " for example, 
that those who are sick, or think themselves sick, 
should be cheered up ; that fear strongly affects the 
system and even predisposes the timid to the sickness 
they stand in dread of ; that children should not be 
coddled over-much, and that men ought to be good ; 
trite sayings all, but to the thoughtless thinker reve- 
lations. 

Yet another reason that commends the book and its 
disciples to the credulous is their boastful assurance 
of impossible results. Reputable practitioners of 
medicine or law do not insure success. Undoubtedly, 
however, such assurance inspires hope, especially in 
credulous minds. Mrs. Eddy does not hesitate to say 
that she cures the hundred cases where physicians 
lose the ninety-and-nine ; l and her disciples have been 
known to give equal assurances to a patient already 
in the death agony. 

A review of these books might be entertaining, and 
even profitable, if it served to enlighten any who may 
have accepted the " Science " without study of its 
genesis, by showing how, out of the time-worn specu- 
lation of idealism that matter does not exist apart 
from mind, a lady of Lynn, Mass., has spun a web of 
incoherent words 2 contradicting themselves on every 

i P. 387, 

2 As if realizing how incoherent, vague and self-contradictory is her 
writing, Mrs. Eddy says, somewhat in the manner of Mr. Bunsby, " In the 
spiritual sense of my subject lies the elucidation of it, and this sense you 
must gain in order to reach my meaning " (p. 391). And again, " Mortal 
mind does not at once catch my meaning, and can only do so as thought 
is educated up to my spiritual apprehension " (p. 392). And finally to 



20 CHKISTIAN science. 

page, and yet so attractive to the credulous as to form 
the nucleus of a cult and of an excellent source of rev- 
enue for the writer, and for those of her disciples 
who, in absolute ignorance of medical science, assume 
to cure every human malady ; not only treating adults, 
but even helpless children, preventing the attendance 
of qualified medical men in critical cases, and even 
condemning observance of the rules of cleanliness, 
hygiene, diet and exercise. But with the metaphysics 
of the book we have here to do only in so far as it af- 
fects the practical system of treating the sick. 

Originally, Mrs. Eddy seems to have been a home- 
opathist of the " high potency " faction, and to have 
been led by recognizing the medicinal inertness of high 
attenuations to her present theories. 1 She, herself, 
says : " Homeopathic remedies, sometimes not contain- 
ing a particle of medicine, are known to relieve the 
symptoms of diseases. "What works the cure ? It is 
the faith of mortal mind that changes its own self-in- 
flicted suffering, and produces a new effect upon the 
body." 2 This would be, at least, intelligible if she did 
not also teach that " there is really no such thing as 
mortal mind ; " 3 that " disease is an impression orig- 
inating in the unconscious mortal mind, and becoming 
at length a conscious belief that the body or matter 
suffers, ... a growth of illusion springing from 
a seed of thought, either your own thought or 

her disciples and general readers she intimates that she can " explicate 
spiritual meanings more fully " by " practical teaching," i. e., presumably 
by attendance on her well paid lectures (p. 17). 

1 " Homeopathy ; Its Friends and its Foes." Annual address by Dr. 
H. M. Paine, President of the Homeopathic Medical Society of the State 
of New York, 1888, Trans. Vol, XXIII. 

2 P. 312, 3 P. 4I9. 



ITS LEGAL ASPECTS. 21 

another's;" 1 that body "is the seedling that starts 
thought, and sends it to the brain for consciousness ; " 2 
that " the entire mortal body is evolved from mortal 
mind," so that a bunion would be insanity if mortal 
mind would only call the foot the brain ; 3 that matter 
" is another name for mortal mind " 4 and " disappears 
under the miscroscope of spirit ; " 5 and that pain, which 
is presumably suffering, is " a belief without an ade- 
quate cause." 6 We are also taught that " disease has 
no intelligence to move itself about or change itself 
from one form to another." 7 Taking again the sen- 
tence just quoted, and substituting these definitions 
for words, we have this remarkable result : " It is the 
faith of mortal mind {i. e., nothing) that changes its 
own self-inflicted sufferings (i. e. 9 beliefs without ade- 
quate cause) and produces a new effect upon the body" 
(i. e., an evolution of mortal mind, or nothing, which 
therefore is itself nothing). 

Before this jargon one may fancy the delighted new 
thinker, like dear Alice after reading the Jabberwock, 
gloriously filled with ideas, but entirely ignorant of 
the meaning. The most that can be made of her 
theory is that disease does not exist save as a false 
belief to be treated with argument ; and the positive 
treatment of it is as follows : First of all, buy Mrs. 
Eddy's books and have the patient do so. 8 This will 
increase the circulation— of the book, if not of the 
patient. Next, deny that there is any disease, and 
make the patient agree with you. " Remember that 
all is mind and there is no matter. You are only 

J P. 182. 2 p. !^ I# 3 P. 300. 4 p. 542. 5 p. 1 j. 6 p. -342. 7 p. 301, 



22 CHKISTIAN SCIENCE. 

seeing or feeling a belief, whether it be cancer, de- 
formity, consumption, or fracture that you deal with." 1 
Having thus established that the disease does not ex- 
ist, you next proceed to "meet the incipient stage of 
disease with such powerful eloquence as a Congress- 
man would employ to defeat the passage of an inhu- 
man law." 2 No disease can stand that. Still more 
oddly, you are to call this disease, whose existence 
you deny, by name, but mentally, lest if the patient 
hear its name, his mortal mind will hold on to the dis- 
ease; for, apparently, the mortal mind, which itself 
has no existence, although impressed by absent treat- 
ment and the reading of Mrs. Eddy's book, cannot let 
go any disease whose name is spoken out loud. But 
if you only address the disease mentally and speak the 
truth to it, " tumors, ulcers, tubercles, inflammation, 
pains and deformed backs ... all dream shad- 
ows, dark images of mortal thought, will flee before 
the light." 3 To the practical mind it would seem that 
the " healer " would need some medical knowledge to 
make his differential diagnosis of " ulcers " and " tu- 
mors," and to distinguish between abscess, aneurism, 
and other abnormal conditions. And if disease does 
not exist, and has no intelligence to move or change 
itself, it does seem a bad waste of time to have anv 
discussion at all with it. 

If this were all of Christian Science, it might do lit- 
tle or no harm. No one would object to letting a 
" Scientist " hold mental conversations with the patient's 
disease, or give " absent treatments," or encourage the 
sick to " look on the bright side." And a kindly soul 

IP. 297. 2 p. 322. 3 p. 301, 



ITS LEGAL ASPECTS. 23 

would no more restrain a " Scientist " from playing 
with his metaphysics than he would interfere with a 
hopeful kitten that whirls in happy pursuit of its own 
elusive tail — always in sight, yet never quite attained. 
But it is the negative teachings of the so-called Science 
that render its disciples pestilent and dangerous to the 
public health. Declaring the incantations of the Es- 
quimaux to be " as effective in cure of the sick as the 
modus operandi of civilized practitioners," Mrs. Eddy 
goes on to teach that physiology is anti-Christian. " It 
teaches us to have other gods before Jehovah. It 
is neither moral nor spiritual." l In its place she would 
substitute harmony ; for " discord is the nothingness 
of error, harmony is the somethingness of truth." 2 
"Sickness is inharmony." 3 This " new thought" is 
even older than that famous little dinner given by 
Agathon, where, notwithstanding the presence of Plato 
and Socrates, Aristophanes got tipsy and asked Eryx- 
imachus, the physician, why, if the latter really be- 
lieved health to be only harmony and love among the 
members, he should prescribe anything so inharmonious 
as sneezing to cure hiccoughs. 

No physician is to be called in by the sick. " The 
Scientist who understands and adheres strictly to the 
rules of my system ... is the only one safe to 
employ in difficult and dangerous cases." 4 

Every form of treatment, Homeopathy, 5 Mind Cure, 6 
Movement Cure, 7 Animal Magnetism, Clairvoyance, 
Mediumship and Mesmerism, 8 is impartially con- 
demned. Against animal magnetism Mrs. Eddy is 

IP. 171. 2 p. 22 . 3 p. i 77 . 4 pp. ^6, 324. 5 p. jgj. 6 p. 376. 
* P. 364. 8 pp. 212, 213, 219, 302. 



24 CHEISTIAN SCIENCE. 

particularly bitter, apparently because, having been 
once " personally manipulated " by the late Mr. P. P. 
Quimby, "an uneducated man, but a distinguished 
mesmerist," it was thereafter stated that Mr. Quimby 
was the " originator " of her writings. 1 " It is morally 
wrong to examine the body in order to ascertain if 
we are in health," and " to employ drugs for the cure 
of disease shows a lack of faith in God. 2 " A Chris- 
tian Scientist never recommends hygiene." 3 Dieting, 
dosing and exercise are unscientific. 4 It is foolish to 
suppose that it is exercise that increases the muscles 
of a blacksmith's arm ; for, if that were so the ham- 
mer, which takes just as much exercise, would also 
grow. 5 This is one of the most powerful and char- 
acteristic arguments of the new thinker. Bathing is 
thus deprecated. " Bathing and rubbing, to alter the 
secretions or remove unhealthy exhalations from the 
cuticle, receive a useful rebuke from Christian Heal- 
ing. We must beware of making clean the outside of 
the platter only. A hint may be taken from the Irish 
emigrant whose filth does not affect his happiness 
when mind and body rest on the same basis." 6 " The 
Scientist takes the best care of his body when he 
leaves it most out of his thought, and like the Apostle 
Paul is ' willing rather to be absent from the body 
and present with the Lord.' " 7 " The daily ablutions 
of an infant are no more natural and necessary than 

i p. 6. a p. 38. 

3 P. 374; Mrs. E. D. 0.,."at an early age learned hygiene (!) and 
practiced it faithfully for over twenty years " with such poor results that 
she " had once been laid out for dead " and " did not want to come to." 
A partial reading of " Science and Health " made her " a well and hearty 
woman." (Misc. W., pp. 401-403.) 

4 P. 376. 5 p. 209. e p. 354. 7 p. 35S . 



Its legal aspects. 25 

it would be to take a fish out of water once a day and 
cover it with dirt, in order to make it thrive more 
vigorously thereafter in its native element." l Medical 
study is harmful. "Anatomy, physiology, treatises 
on health — sustained by what is called material law — 
are the husbandmen of sickness and disease." 2 
Proper clothing is unnecessary ; for " you would never 
conclude that flannel is better than controlling Mind 
for warding off pulmonary disease, if you understood 
the Science of being." 3 If one be only a Christian 
Scientist he " may expose himself in a state of perspi- 
ration to draughts of air without experiencing the us- 
ual ill effects ; " 4 i. e., Christian Science is prophy- 
lactic, and this is expressly asserted. 5 

The foregoing is all bad enough as to adults ; but, 
when it concerns them only, something may be said 
in favor of the decision, cited by Puff end orf, in the 
case of a patient who sued a horse-doctor for blinding 
him by applying to his eyes the same ointment that 
was used for horses. The Cadi decided against the 
suitor, because: "If the Fellow," says he, "had not 
been an Ass, he had never applied himself to a Horse- 
doctor." 6 

But what is to be said of such advice as this to 
mothers ? " Mind can regulate the condition of the 
stomach, bowels, food, temperature of your child far 
better than matter can do so. Your views and those 
of other people on these subjects produce their good 
or bad results in the health of your child." 7 " Your 
child can have worms, if you say so, or whatever 

i P. 159. 2 P. 183. 3 p. 160. 4 p. 314. 5 p. 34 8, e p u ff. Book, V., Ch. 
IV. *P. 158. 



26 CHRISTIAN SCIEKCE. 

malady is timorously holden in your mind relative to 
the body. Thus you lay the foundation of disease and 
death, and educate your child into discord ? l Even 
if a child is attacked by contagious disease, Mrs. Eddy 
attributes the cause to maternal fear. 2 Thus the 
mother is taught that her child's illness depends upon 
her fancy, and that neither physicians, remedies nor 
decent, cleanly care are necessary for its aid. And in 
the record of deaths resulting from the treatment of 
Christian Scientists, Faith Curers, Peculiar People, et 
id genus omne, a large proportion are those of 
neglected children suffering from acute inflammations 
of the lungs, diphtheria, pneumonia and like com- 
plaints. One horrible and typical case in Brooklyn 
was brought to public notice by an undertaker called 
in by a Faith Curer to bury the latter's child, six 
years of age, dead from diphtheria. Two other chil- 
dren, one about eight, the other less than two years 
old, were found suffering from the same disease. The 
father explained his failure to call in medical aid by 
saying he did not believe in doctors since he believed 
in Christ. 3 Here his delusion caused not only the 
death of his own child, but put in peril the public 
health. The same neglect would have occurred had 
the case been smallpox or scarlet fever. 

A number of even more harrowing cases might be 
cited, did space or inclination serve ; but their recital 
is needless. i 

Contrary to ordinary belief, even prayer is es- 

1 P. 159. 2 P. 334. 3N. Y. papers, March I., 1890. 

4 The New York World of Aug. 12, 1899, prints a list of forty-one per- 
sons alleged to have suffered from this delusion. It omits many to be 
found in a scrap-book kept by the writer. 



ITS LEGAL ASPECTS. 27 

chewed. " The only beneficial effect of prayer is on 
the human mind, making it act more powerfully on 
the body through a stronger faith in God. This, 
however, is one belief casting out another, a belief in 
the unknown casting out a belief in sickness." l And 
when we remember that " belief can only bring on 
disease, it can never relieve it," the inefficacy of 
prayer becomes manifest; and we are expressly 
taught that "if we pray to God as a person, this 
will prevent us letting go the human doubts and fears 
that attend all personalities." 2 

The most ignorant persons set themselves up to 
cure the sick under this system as a business and for 
hire. Mrs. Eddy herself accumulates and publishes 
certificates of cures by herself, by her disciples and 
by the mere reading of her book, that are contrary to 
all possibility in human experience and smack in 
every line of the charlatan. Her volume of "Mis- 
cellaneous Writings " is in part made up of certifi- 
cates differing from those that usually accompany 
quack nostrums, only in that they are more incredible 
than those the ordinary charlatan ventures to put 
forth. She cures cancers in one visit. A child of 
eighteen months, suffering for months with ulceration 
of the bowels, and given up by the " M. D.'s," is lifted 
from his cradle and kissed, he at once begins to play 
with his toys, and that night before retiring eats 
heartily of cabbage ! 3 One Mrs. Armstrong writes, 

i P. 488. 2 P. 492, cf. 484 and 393. 

3 P. 200. This certificate dated "Lynn, June, 1873," savs "Mrs. 
Eddy came in," etc., although Mrs. Glover-Patterson did not marry Mr. 
Eddy until four years later, in 1877 — (See note to tne case against Chris- 
tian Science, p. 60.) 



28 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 

without date or address, to enclose a check for $500, 
in payment of an absent treatment by which heart 
disease and dropsy, lasting from childhood, were 
cured immediately upon Mrs. Eddy's receipt of a 
letter from Mr. Armstrong. x Hood's case of " Mrs. 
F., so exceedingly deaf," who purchased an ear 
trumpet, "and very next day heard from her hus- 
band in Botany Bay," becomes modest in comparison. 
But, although Mrs. Eddy personally cures fractures — 
did, in fact, by " absent treatment " cure the crushed 
foot of Mr. R. O. Badgeley, of Cincinnati; 2 and al- 
though she expressly teaches that her Science cures 
" acute and chronic forms of disease, 3 and fractures " 4 
as well as other deformities — nay more, has "raised 
the dying to life and health " 5 — she nevertheless says : 
" Until the advancing age admits the efficacy and 
supremacy of Mind, it is better to leave the adjustment 
of broken bones and dislocations to the fingers of sur- 
geons, while you confine yourself chiefly to mental 
reconstruction and the prevention of inflammations or 
protracted confinement." 6 

Here Mrs. Eddy confesses the sham of her theory. 
Earth often covers the physicians' mistakes, but not 
so frequently those of the surgeon. The vast major- 
ity of suits for malpractice are in surgical cases. The 
results of operations often demonstrate the malprac- 
tice. And is it not fair thus to paraphrase this sly 
advice ; " Take any risk with the sick. If the patient 
die, who can prove that you caused the death ? But 
be wary in surgical cases, for there ignorance and lack 
of skill, being demonstrable, may cause you to pay 

»P. 199. 2 P. 199. 3 p. !86. < P. 358. 6 p. 3^, ep t 328. 



ITS LEGAL ASPECTS. 29 

heavily for your persumption ? " The fitting climax 
to this farrago of undigested metaphysics and vain 
boasting l is, that hunger and thirst are also mental 
impressions to be argued with, 2 that food is not requi- 
site to support life, although " it would be foolish to 
stop eating until we gain more goodness / " 3 and, lastly, 
that, as there is no mortal mind from which to make 
a mortal body, immortality is already here. 4 

The methods of this extraordinary system of cure 
for the sick have been set out thus fully and, it is be- 
lieved, fairly, because in no reported law case have 
they been brought before the Court, and the author- 
ity of any adjudicated case depends upon the facts in- 
volved. Obiter dicta are often as misleading as met- 
aphysical speculation. Summed up, these methods 
consist positively in reading Mrs. Eddy's book and 
arguing with non-existent disease ; and negatively in 
abstaining from everything that experience shows to 
be of benefit to the sick, not only specific medication 
and operative treatment, but diet, exercise and per- 
sonal cleanliness. The evidence of the senses is not 
to be heeded ; it is even forbidden to admit that a lit- 
tle child needs medical care. Surely no well-balanced 
mind will deny that this delusion is full of danger, no 
matter how sincerely and honestly many believe in it. 

Thus we are brought to our third inquiry : Do ex- 
isting laws suffice us in dealing with this delusion and 
its votaries, or is further legislation necessary in the 

1 " There are certain self-evident facts. This is one of them that who- 
ever practices the Science I teach, through which the Divine mind 
pours light and healing upon this generation cannot pursue mal-practice, 
or harm patient" (p. 219). 

8 PP. 329, 334- 3 P. 33 2 - 4 p P- 316-327. 



30 CHEiSTIAlSr SCIENCE. 

premises! With the metaphysical and religious as- 
pects of the delusion, the law has no more concern 
than with those of Mormonism, Voodooism, Shaker- 
ism, Oneidaism or any of the myriad forms of God or 
Devil worship. Ephraim may join himself to all the 
idols he desires, the law lets him alone. But neither 
in this life nor the life to come is every one who cries, 
" Lord, Lord, have we not in Thy name done manv won- 
derf ul works ? " to escape just punishment for working 
iniquity, or to be received among the saints upon his 
own uncorroborated testimony. By the Mormon cases, 
the Supreme Court of the United States has made it 
plain, if it were ever in doubt, that no one under the 
cloak of religion can violate law to gratify lust or 
greed, or for any other motive. Thugs may not kill 
because murder is their creed. And there is no rea- 
son why ignorant persons 1 should be allowed to trifle 
with human life to the public peril, even though they 
wish to do well and have no worse motive than to re- 
ceive a fee. 

The right of the State to forbid the ignorant to en- 
gage in the business of healing the sick by any system 

1 In order to be satisfied of the ignorance, recklessness, credulity, and 
assurance of the " Scientists," one need only read the " certificates " pub- 
lished in " Miscellaneous Works" along with Mrs. Eddy's " Poems." It 
seems that the new gospel has been successfully preached in the Massa- 
chusetts State Prison. One of Mrs. Eddy's correspondents, "J. B. H." 
whether a temporary sojourner in the prison or not is not quite clear, 
writes that after reading " Science and Health " for some days he was 
" affected by drowsiness followed by vomiting. This lasted several 
hours." He then slept and " awoke healed." Thereafter in three treat- 
ments he cured a child " that the M. D. ? s said was dying.of lung fever." 
In two treatments he cured a ruptured child ; and in one treatment he 
healed an old lady of heart disease and chills. To top off with and keep 
his hand in, he, in two weeks of absent treatment, cured a lady of insanity 
who never saw him, nor even suspected what he was up to. Misc. W., 
pp. 405, 406. 



ITS LEGAL ASPECTS. 31 

whatever, is established; and therefore whether or 
not such persons may practice Christian Science de- 
pends entirely upon the phrasing of the statute. 
Where, as in Nebraska, the law defines a medical 
practitioner as one who " professes to heal " the sick, 
the practice of Christian Science by unlicensed per- 
sons is a violation of l&w ; but in jurisdictions where 
medical practice is forbidden, yet the use of drugs or 
instruments is made the test of such* practice, the 
" Scientist " may pursue his business. So, too, the 
liability of these people to penalties for their failure 
to report contagious diseases or deaths of patients de- 
pends on the phrasing of the law or ordinance, and 
they certainly should be required, if allowed to prac- 
tice, to make such reports, even though they believe 
in neither disease nor death. 

In England, unlicensed medical practice is not a 
misdemeanor ; and, therefore, an illegal practitioner 
cannot there, as with us, be found guilty, construct- 
ively, of manslaughter, should his patients die. But 
it is a general rule of law that a person undertaking a 
duty must possess skill and knowledge competent for 
its successful discharge. If a person engage in the 
business of curing the sick without such competent 
skill and knowledge, he becomes civilly liable in dam- 
ages for injuries resulting from his incompetence ; 
and if, by reason of his gross negligence, ignorance or 
carelessness, his patient die, then he is guilty of man- 
slaughter at least, and may be guilty of murder. 
Upon these principles the famous quack, St. John 
Long, was convicted of manslaughter at the Old 
Bailev in 1830. And, in 1884, one Pierce was simi- 

y ' ■ 



32 CHEISTIAN SCIENCE. 

larly convicted in Massachusetts. This gross and 
wicked negligence may manifest itself either posi- 
tively, as when one administers recklessly or igno- 
rantly a powerful drug, or negatively, as when a Chris- 
tian Scientist or other fanatic, thrusting himself into 
the place of a competent person and assuming the 
duty of care, deprives the patient of proper attention, 
and permits or advises unsuitable diet, improper cloth- 
ing or other harmful violation of hygienic laws. The 
fact that Christian Scientists, Faith Curers, Mind 
Curers, and practitioners of like sort, do not custom- 
arily administer drugs or use instruments, is not suf- 
ficient reason why they should escape liability for in- 
juries resulting from their treatment. It is said in a 
very recent case that a shipmaster may be liable in 
damages for negligently losing his brig, although his 
negligence was due to temporary insanity ; the gen- 
eral rule of law being that, as the results of his mis- 
fortune should be borne by him, not by the equally 
innocent, an insane person is to be held civilly re- 
sponsible for " what in sane persons would be willful 
and negligent conduct." Thus, the best plea that 
could be made for a Christian Scientist, religious in- 
sanity, would be of no avail in an action against him 
for damages proven to have resulted from his negli- 
gence. 

The sum of the matter, then, is this : Under existing 
laws, wherever the statute forbids' any oiue without 
license to undertake to " heal " the sick, or uses equiv- 
alent words, and wherever the phrase "practice of 
medicine " is not construed by the Courts as applying 
exclusively to the administration of drugs and the use 



ITS LEGAL ASPECTS. 33 

of instruments, Christian Scientists, undertaking the 
cure of the sick without license to practice medicine, 
become subject to the penalties of the law. They may- 
be also, according to the phrasing of the statute, pun- 
ishable for failure to report contagious diseases, and 
for other violations of health ordinances. They are 
civilly liable in damages for their malfeasances and 
misfeasance ; and, if death can be shown to have re- 
sulted from their gross ignorance or neglect, they may 
be indicted for manslaughter. English cases appar- 
ently to the contrary seem to proceed upon a theory 
that the negligent persons owed no duty to the de- 
ceased. The recent case, for example, of the news- 
paper correspondent who died while in care of Chris- 
tian Scientists establishes nothing. It was not prose- 
cuted — for what reason does not satisfactorily appear, 
but presumably because the fanatics in attendance on 
decedent were only rendering friendly services and 
did not owe deceased a duty. I may lawfully believe 
in suicide and discuss the examples of Socrates and 
Cato without being liable for the death of a friend 
who imitates them, but I may not lawfully partici- 
pate in the suicidal act. And Mr. Justice Hawkins is 
said by the Lam Journal to have carefully guarded 
himself against appearing to sanction the course 
adopted in Frederic's case. 

New legislation in the premises is not called for, 
except, perhaps, to define "practice of medicine" 
more broadly in some jurisdictions. Such a definition 
was stricken from the New York Medical Act of 1887 
by a Senator who feared it would operate against a 
friend of his who kept a bathing house. Last year a, 



34 CHEISTIAN SCIENCE. 

bill of somewhat the same purport seems to have been 
abandoned by the Senator having it in charge, for no 
other reason, so far as can be learned, than that more 
than the usual number of ladies appeared to oppose it. 
Children are now very generally protected by special 
laws. No statute can cure an adult of folly. Laws 
specifically forbidding the practice of Christian Science 
would only provide that cheap martyrdom which 
would be welcomed by an advertising business, and 
would be wrong, both in principle and policy. The 
delusion itself is bound to die, as did that of John of 
» Leyden and many another before and since that 

prophet's time ; and it is quite certain to be succeeded 
, by others. 

In New York city about 1832, a period of "great 
awakening " that begat Mormonism and many other 
sects — among them one in Kentucky, whose members, 
in order to win Heaven by making themselves as little 
children, used to crawl on their hands and knees in 
church, play marbles, trundle hoops and otherwise 
manifest their infantile madness — one Matthews, 1 a 
carpenter, having assumed the name Matthias, pro- 
claimed himself to be God, the Father. He found be- 
lievers, most of them ignorant but some intelligent, 
procured much money and ruined many persons. He 
and his disciples claimed to heal the sick quite as suc- 
cessfully as the Scientists now do. One of them, a 
Mr. Pierson, a victim of religious delusion, even before 
the coming of Matthias, had endeavored under most 
distressing and pathetic circumstances publicly to raise 
his wife from the dead, accepting literally the verse 

1 Matthias and his Impostures, Harpers, 1836. 



ITS LEGAL ASPECTS. 35 

of the General Epistle of St. James directing the elders 
to anoint and pray over the sick, and promising that 
" the Lord shall raise him up." Matthias, being even- 
tually indicted for procuring $630 from a Mr. Folger 
under the false pretence that he was God, able to re- 
mit sins, and would communicate the Holy Ghost to 
said Folger, the District Attorney entered a nolle 
prosequi for these reasons : To maintain the indict- 
ment, he said, I must prove that defendant's pretences 
were false and would deceive a man of ordinary intel- 
ligence and prudence, but no sane person would believe 
that Matthias is God, nor can I establish the falsity of 
his statement by legal evidence. Matthias was, how- 
ever, convicted on lesser charges. 

The memory of the adventuress, Diss de Bar, is 
fresh. In 1888 she was convicted by a New York 
jury of fraud in obtaining money from a lawyer of 
admittedly large attainments, and a former associate 
of Mr. "Webster. She, too, sought to cloud the real 
issue by claiming that the right to believe in Spiritual- 
ism was involved. During her trial, the usual train 
of " ladies " and " intelligent persons " attended her, 
one of her satellites being a former diplomat and an 
ex-Regent of the University of the State. Since her 
imprisonment her star has waned. These cases illus- 
trate at once the difficulty and possibilities of dealing 
with religious fanatics through existing laws, when 
wrong theory is reduced to harmful practice. 

That Christian Scientists frequently offend against 
the criminal law seems to be clear, and their prosecu- 
tion in such cases would be of value if it enlightened 
the public as to their real teaching; for it seems 



36 CHKISTIAST SCIENCE. 

scarcely possible that an intelligent person, becoming 
fully acquainted with " Science and Health " and its 
teachings, could fail to visit Mrs. Eddy's cult with 
condemnation as strong as that which she unsparingly 
lays upon the competing cults of Faith Curers, Mind 
Curers, Animal Magnetists and Clairvoyants ; or that 
any one of taste or humor, after reading the 
" Poems " and quack advertisements of the " Miscella- 
neous Writings," would not blush to confess himself a 
disciple of the new " thought." Publicity will destroy 
the cult far more quickly than legislation. 






II. 

THE CASE AGAIISTST CHKISTIAN SCIENCE. 1 

Iisr the March number of the North American Re- 
view, it was essayed in the article, " Christian Science 
and its Legal Aspects," to state clearly, as far as that 
is possible, the teachings of Mrs. Eddy ; using, in order 
to be scrupulously fair, her own words, and referring 
each citation to its page in her text-book, " Science 
and Health, with Key to the Scriptures." 

It was there said : " Publicity will destroy the cult 
far more quickly than legislation." In that belief it is 
proposed here, with equal fairness, by quotations from 
her books, " Miscellaneous Writings " and " Ketrospec- 
tion and Introspection," the latter being autobiograph- 
ical in character, to show something of the life, pre- 
tensions, methods and literary output of this remarkable 
woman, leaving the reader to judge from her own 
words whether she is, as her partisans assert, learned, 
modest, truthful and generous, or, as her adversaries 
declare, ignorant, irreverent, boastful, and greedy. 
We assume that candid, intelligent persons, interested 
in her teachings and alleged marvellous cures, are 
willing to learn the truth and try the teacher upon 
her utterances in the forum of common sense. * If 
Mrs. Eddy did nothing more than teach a philosophic 
or religious theorv we should waste no time in aca- 
demic discussion of it. But she teaches a practice 
that daily puts the lives of adults and, more horrible 

1 From the North American Review. 

37 



38 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 

still, of little children at the mercy of persons ignorant 
both of medical and mental science. 

Some of her quondam friends and disciples have 
published matter denouncing Mrs. Eddy and attribut- 
ing her theories and her cure of a severe illness to a 
Mr. P. P. Quimby, 1 deceased, whom she disparages as 
"an uneducated man." To our apprehension, a fair 
representation of the woman and her works will be 
more profitable than heated controversy or labored 
argument. "We concede to her, for what it is worth, 
the discovery of Christian Science, and ask no more 
than that the reader, friendly or hostile, examine 
judicially these gleanings from her works and form 
his own conclusions. 

It has been said that the best corrective of judg- 
ment is the sense of humor, the faculty of appreciat- 
ing one's own absurdities. Mrs. Eddy and her disciples 
take themselves very seriously. But that Mrs. Eddy 
considers the rival system of Faith Cure ridiculous, 
appears from this merry jest of hers : - 

" When looking deeply into the effects of faith 
based on corporeal personality instead of the Divine 
Principle, the following colloquy is suggested : 

" ' Have you ever tried the faith-cure ? ' asked a 
solemn looking stranger of a gentleman in a. street 
car. ' I have," was the answer. 4 Do you believe in 
it ? ' ' I do.' ' May I ask of what you were cured ? ' 
1 Certainly ; I was cured of my faith.' " 2 

Thus, by example, she invites a display of her own 
drolleries. 

1 See two articles in the Arena for May, 1899, by Horatio W. Dresser 
and Josephine C. Woodbury. 

2 " Retrospection and Introspection," p. 68, 



THE CASE AGAINST CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 39 

Who, then, and what is Mrs. Mary Moss Baker 
Glover Patterson Eddy, who in 1866, threw light 
upon the Gospels for lack of which saints, sages and 
poets, stumbling in darkness through the ages, have 
failed to apprehend the Saviour's teaching ; who has 
written a book the mere reading of which cures 
cancer ; to whom churches are built wherein is read 
the Lord's Prayer expanded and improved by her 
interpolations ? 

One of her foremost apostles, Mr. Carol Norton, a 
young gentleman belonging to "The International 
Board of Lectureship of the Mother Church of Chris- 
tian Science in Boston, Mass.," in a lecture copyrighted 
in 1898, 1 presumably with her approval, thus describes 
her— he uses the past tense, but the lady still lives as 
mortal mind understands the term : 

" A quiet dignity and a divine perseverance were 
her conspicuous characteristics. Her life motives were 
essentially unselfish, philanthropic and idealistic. As 
a student she was penetrating, inquiring, progressive. 
Perhaps her strongest point was that she always 
worked in a direct line. One of her most marked 
characteristics was that, if she had worked mentally in 
a wrong direction, she could turn about with intelli- 
gent ease. . . . While from the human standpoint 
she inherited the refinement that goes with culture of 
family and moral rectitude, yet there was a marked 
degree of spiritual grace, delicacy and elegance which 
comes not from human ancestry, neither from commun- 
ion with nature. It was the exquisite coloring of the 
touch of the hands of divine Mind which opens the 
petals of thought, as it does of the opening rose, and 
evolves a symmetry of disposition, temperament and 

1 Printed in the Troy Record, February 28, 1899. 



40 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 

poise which is at once recognized as of Divine not 
human origin. . . . She spent no time in intellec- 
tual drifting. Intuition and logic she united in her 
mental processes of reasoning. . . . Adherence 
to the impersonal and scientific deductions of the phil- 
osophical teachings of Mary Baker Eddy represents 
nothing different from the loyalty of a mathematician 
to the unchanging rule of mathematics." 

The italics are ours. If the description seems per- 
fervid, it should be remembered that Mrs. Eddy calls 
herself and is called by her disciples " Mother," * and 
Mr. Norton's words are little stronger than those 
addressed by pius ^Eneas to his dam, "Haud tibi 
voltus mortalis, nee vox hominem sonat: 0, dea 
certe ! " 

Any reader of Mrs. Eddy's books will admit the 
ease with which she turns about ; whether it be intel- 
ligent or consistent with logic and loyalty to unchang- 
ing rules is another matter. 

An apostle worthy of the name should have a some- 
what extraordinary childhood, and Mrs. Eddy writes : 

" For some twelve months, when I was about eight 
years old, I repeatedly heard a voice calling me dis- 
tinctly by name, three times in an ascending scale." 

Her mother persistently ignored this occurrence, 
until one day a cousin, Mehitable Huntoon, also heard 
the voice. Then Mrs. Baker told Mary of little Sam- 

1 Thus an alleged disciple writes : " Dear Mother : The most blessed 
of women ! Oh, how I long to sit within range of your voice and hear 
the Truth that comes to you from on High ! for none could speak such 
wondrous thoughts as have come from your pen, except it be « the Spirit 
that speaketh in you.' " " Miscellaneous Writings," p. 415. 

Mrs. Eddy constantly applies the title to herself, for example : " I, for 
one, would be pleased to have the Christian Science Board of Directors 
itemize a bill of this church's gifts to Mother." " Miscellaneous Writ- 
ings," p. 131. 



THE CASE AGAINST CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 41 

uel and bade her answer when next she heard the 
voice, " Speak, Lord, for thy servant heareth." The 
child obeyed ; but the result was disappointing : 

" When the call came again I did answer, in the 
words of Samuel, but never again to material senses 
was that mysterious call audibly repeated." l 

Apparently the voice had nothing particular to say. 

At the age of twelve, Mary was admitted to the 
Congregationalist Church, after much perturbation 
over the doctrine of unconditional election or predes- 
tination, due to very creditable unwillingness to be 
saved if her brothers and sisters were to be damned. 
Her mental distress brought on fever, so the physician 
said; and her mother bade her seek God in prayer. 
Obedience this time brought an excellent result : 

" A soft glow of ineffable joy came over me, the 
fever was gone, and I arose and dressed myself in a 
normal condition of health. Mother saw this and 
was glad. The physician marvelled ; and the ' horri- 
ble decree ' of Predestination — as John Calvin rightly 
called his own tenet — forever lost its power over 
me." 2 

Notwithstanding her refusal to accept Calvin's doc- 
trine, the good pastor insisted that she had been 
" truly regenerated ; " and she was received into the 
communion, of which she says : 

"My connection with this religious body was re- 
tained till I founded a church of my own, built on 
the basis of Christian Science, Jesus Christ himself 
being the chief corner stone." 2, 

1 Under the caption, " Voices not our own " (" Retrospection and Intro- 
spection," pp. 16-18). 

2 " Theological Reminiscences," " Retrospection and Introspection," pp. 
20-24. 



42 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 

In telling of her Early Studies, 1 Mrs. Eddy accounts 
for her constant disregard of the once respected shade 
of Lindley Murray : 

" My father was taught that my brain was too large 
for my body, and so kept me much out of school, but 
I gained book-knowledge with far less labor than is 
usually requisite. At ten years of age I was as 
familiar with Lindley Murray's Grammar as I was 
with the "Westminster Catechism ; and the latter I had 
to repeat every Sunday. My favorite studies were 
Natural Philosophy, Logic and Moral Science. To 
my brother Albert I was indebted for lessons in the 
ancient tongues, Hebrew, Greek and Latin. My 
brother studied Hebrew during his college vacations. 
After my discovery of Christian Science, most of the 
knowledge I had gleaned from school books vanished 
like a dream." 

This unfortunate effect of Mrs. Eddy's discovery, 
apparent on almost every page of her writings, ac- 
counts for her early defence of her system against 
the charge of Pantheism upon the assumption that 
"the word Pantheism was derived from the sylvan 
God Pan," and also for her confusion of Gnosticism 
with Agnosticism. 2 These errors of mortal mind are 
quite understandable when we consider that the 
teacher, if she ever knew anything of history, reli- 
gion, or philosophy, had forgotten all that she had 
learned from books. 

Miss Mary Moss Baker in 1843 married Col. George 
Washington Glover, of South Carolina, 3 of whom she 
says : 

1 " Retrospection and Introspection," p. 19. 

2 May "Arena," p. 561. 

3 " Retrospection and Introspection," p. 24. 



THE CASE AGAINST CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 43 

" He was spared to me for only one brief year. He 
was in Wilmington, North Carolina, when the yellow 
fever raged in that city, and was suddenly attacked by 
this insidious disease^ which in his case proved fatal." l 

This admission that " insidious disease " exists and 
can rage must be a slip of the pen. We are all 
aware now that Disease and Death are only errors 
of mortal mind. 

Upon Col. Glover's death, his widow returned to 
New England, where a child was born who, at the 
age of four years, was sent away and not seen by her 
again until, at the age of thirty-four, he visited her in 
Boston. Upon their separation she wrote the poem 
" Mother's Darling," of which she gives us only one 
verse : 

" Thy smile through tears,, as sunshine o'er the sea, 
Awoke new beauty in the surge's roll ! 
Oh, life is dead, bereft of all, with thee, — 
Star of my earthly hope, babe of my soul.'/ 2 

Mrs. Mary Moss Baker Glover contracted second 
nuptials with a gentleman whose name does not ap- 
pear in " Eetrospection and Introspection," although 
the event is thus referred to : 

"My second marriage was very unfortunate, and 
from it I was compelled to ask for a bill of divorce, 
which was granted me in the city of Salem, Massachu- 
setts. My dominant thought in marrying again was 
to get back my child. The disappointment which fol- 
lowed was terrible. His stepfather was envious ; and 
although George was a tender-hearted and manly boy, 
he hated him as much as I loved him." 3 

Adherence to Mr. Murray's forgotten rules might 

1 " Retrospection and Introspection," p. 24. 
2 " Retrospection and Introspection," p. 26. 
3 " Retrospection and Introspection," p. 27. 



44 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 

have made clearer who hated whom ; and it is cer- 
tainly unfortunate that anybody hated any one; for 
hate, we are taught, is, like fear, a cause or form of 
disease. It appears, however, from a letter of the 
lady who is now Mrs. Eddy, written on March 7, 
1883, to the Boston Post and quoted by Mr. Dresser 1 
that this second consort was Dr. Patterson, " a distin- 
guished dentist " who, while his wife was away from 
home, undergoing Mr. Quimby's treatment, eloped 
" with a married woman from one of the wealthiest 
families." The distinction of the doctor and the 
wealth of the erring lady might seem to have been 
mentioned as softening the blow, were it not that, in 
reality, there was no blow to soften, as transpires 
from these words of the apparently deserted wife : 

" It is well to know, dear reader, that this bit of 
material history is but the record of dreams, not of 
real existence, and the dream has no place in Chris- 
tian Science. It is as ' a tale that is told,' and as ' the 
shadow when it declineth.' " 2 

Notwithstanding— perhaps, indeed on account of — 
this unreality of marriage, Mrs. Mary Moss Baker. 
Glover-Patterson, thirty-four years after her first al- 
liance, and when somewhere about sixty years of age, 
as nearly as we can compute, entered upon a third, of 
which she says under the caption, " A True Man : " 3 

" My last marriage was with Asa Gilbert Eddy, and 
was a blessed and spiritual union, solemnized at Lynn, 
Massachusetts, by the Rev. Samuel Barrett Stewart, in 
the year 1877. Dr. Eddy was the first student to 

1 May " Arena" p. 545. 

2 " Retrospection and Introspection," p. 27. 

3 " Retrospection and Introspection," p. 54. 



THE CASE AGAINST CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 45 

publicly announce himself a Christian Scientist, and 
place these symbolic words on his office sign. He 
forsook all to follow in this line of light. He was the 
first organizer of a Christian Science Sunday-school, 
which he superintended. He also taught a special 
Bible-class ; and he lectured so ably on Scriptural 
topics that even ministers listened to him with mingled 
surprise and approbation. He was remarkably suc- 
cessful in Mind-healing, and untiring in his chosen 
work. In 1882 he passed away, with a smile of peace 
and love resting on his serene countenance." l 

To our natural instinct, this dealing with a lady's re- 
peated dreams is distasteful. We lack sympathy with 
the common desire to pry into love affairs of the great. 
But when philosophers like Jean Jacques and Mrs. 
Eddy insist on taking us behind the veil, there is nothing 
for it but to drop our sandals and trot along. Indeed, 
unless we yielded our scruples in the present case, we 
should by excess of delicacy lose the " nexus " and be 
plunged into obscurity. This is Mrs. Eddy's avowed 
reason for relating these three " dreams " and shadows 
that declined : 

1 It is said in the May Arena (p. 563) : " The physician who con- 
ducted the autopsy says that the death was the result of distinctly de- 
veloped heart disease ; but Mrs. Eddy declared that it was the result of 
arsenical poisoning mentally ad?7iinistered''\ f However that may be, it is 
true that Christian Science did not save Mr. Eddy, although, if we may 
believe these words of his wife, it would have saved her. " When the 
mental malpractice of poisoning people was first undertaken by a mesmer- 
ist, to test that malpractice, I experimented by taking some large doses of 
morphine, to see if Christian Science could not obviate its effect ; and I 
say with tearful thanks, « The drug has no effect upon me whatever.' The 
hour has struck, ' If they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them.' " 
" Miscellaneous Writings," topic " Falsehood," p. 249. This surpasses 
Cagliostro's challenge to the Empress Catherine's physician, who de- 
nounced him as a quack and his elixir as a humbug. Prepare, said 
Cagliostro, the most deadly poisons of which you know and I will do the 
same. I will take your poison and then swallow a dose of my antidote. 
You shall take mine and save yourself as best you can. 



46 CHRISTIAN SCIEKCE. 

"Mere historic incidents and personal events are 
frivolons and of no moment, unless they illustrate the 
ethics of Truth. To this end, but only to this end, 
such narrations may be admissible and advisable ; but 
if spiritual conclusions are separated from their prem- 
ises, the nexus is lost, and the argument, with its 
rightful conclusions, becomes correspondingly ob- 
scure." l 

In view of her concrete experiences, Mrs. Eddy's 
opinions upon marriage in the abstract become inter- 
esting. In reply to the question, " What do you think 
of marriage ? " she answers : 

"That it is often convenient, sometimes pleasant, 
and occasionally a love affair. Marriage is susceptible 
of many definitions. It sometimes presents the most 
wretched condition of human existence. To be nor- 
mal it must be a union of the affections that tends to 
lift mortals higher." 2 

That her so-called " science " does not fully accord 
with the prevalent views of decent men she admits by 
replying in this manner to the question : " Is marriage 
nearer right than celibacy ? " 

"Human knowledge inculcates that it is, while Sci- 
ence indicates that it is not. But to force the con- 
sciousness of scientific being before it is understood is 
impossible, and believing otherwise would prevent 
scientific demonstration. . . . 

"Eights that are bargained away must not be re- 
taken by the contractors, except by mutual consent. 
Human nature has bestowed on a wife the right to be- 
come a mother ; but if the wife esteems not this priv- 
ilege, by mutual consent, exalted and increased affec- 
tions, she may win a higher. Science touches the 

1 " Retrospection and Introspection," p. 28. 
•"Miscellaneous Writings," p. 52. 



THE CASE AGAINST CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 47 

conjugal question on the basis of a bill of rights. Can 
the bill of Conjugal Rights be fairly stated by a magis- 
trate or by a minister ? " l 

The abolition of marriage she seems to consider pos- 
sible, if not desirable, although not now practicable. 

" To abolish marriage at this period, and maintain 
morality and generation, would put ingenuity to 
ludicrous shifts, yet this is possible in Science, al- 
though it is to-day problematic" 2 

Quitting gladly these recitals of " personal events," 
that have given us " the nexus" we may turn to Mrs. 
Eddy's account of her priceless discovery that the 
study of Anatomy, Physiology and every branch of 
Medical Science, the practice of Medicine, according to 
any School, or of Animal Magnetism, Movement Cure, 
Clairvoyance, Mind Cure and Faith Cure, even the 
taking of exercise and observance of hygienic rules, 
are all wrong and harmful, Christian Science being the 
sole curative. 3 She savs : 

" This discovery was so new, — the basis it laid 
down for physical and moral health was so hopelessly 
original, and men were so unfamiliar with the sub- 
ject, that I did not venture upon its publication until 
later." 

But eventually she published her first book, " The 
Science of Man," and she tells us that when " people 
were healed by simply reading it, the copyright was 
infringed. I entered a suit at law and my copyright 
was protected." 4 

Here we see that Mrs. Eddy's " Key to the Scrip- 

1 " Miscellaneous Writings," pp. 288, 289. 

2 " Miscellaneous Writings," p. 286. 

3 See p. 23 for citations upon this point. 

< "First Publications," "Retrospection and Introspection," p. 47. 



48 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 

tures" does not interpret literally the command, 
" Give to him that asketh thee, and from him that 
would borrow of thee turn not thou away ; " or the 
other, " And if any man will sue thee at the law and 
take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also." 
She vociferously cries "copyright, copyright," lest 
her students or the Quimbyites nest, Bathylluslike, 
where she has builded. Fear is disease ; yet in terror 
lest her own disciples filch her discovery, she sets up 
this scarecrow on her literary domain. 

" If you should print and publish your copy of my 
works you would be liable to arrest for infringement of 
copyright, which the law defines, and punishes as theft ! 
. . . Your manuscript copy is liable, in some way, 
to be printed as your original writings, thus incurring 
the penalty of the law, and increasing the record of 
theft in the United States Circuit Court." * 

Thus, while claiming supernatural knowledge of 
God's laws, Mrs. Eddy, to protect her pocketbook, 
grossly misstates the law of the land, under which in- 
fringement of copyright is not theft or punishable as 
crime. 

It was high time for some one to discover Mrs. 
Eddy's discovery ; for she says with that modesty of 
which we are in quest : 

" Even the Scripture gave no direct interpretation 
of the Scientific basis for demonstrating the spiritual 
Principle of healing, until our Heavenly Father saw 
fit, through the ' Key to the Scriptures,' in 4 Science 
and Health,' to unlock this 'mystery of godliness.'" 2 

1 " Miscellaneous Writings," p. 300. See also " Retrospection and In- 
trospection," under the titles "The Precious Volume," pp. 49-51, and 
"Plagiarism," p. 93. 

2 " Retrospection and Introspection," p. 51. 



THE CASE AGAINST CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 49 

This fear lest her copyright be infringed constantly 
haunts Mrs. Eddy. As late as June 4, 1899, in her 
address to the First Church at its annual communion, 
she says : u All published quotations from my works 
must have the author's name added to them ; quota- 
tion marks are not sufficient. Borrowing from my 
copyrighted works without credit is inadmissible." * 

Unless she had found the key to this mystery no one 
else could have done so : 

" It is often asked why Christian Science was re- 
vealed to me as one Intelligence analyzing, uncover- 
ing, and annihilating the false testimony of the phys- 
ical senses. . . . No one else can drain the cup 
which I have drunk to the dregs, as the discoverer . and 
teacher of Christian Science ; neither can its inspira- 
tion be gained without tasting the cup." 2 

P. P. Quimby in particular, Mrs. Eddy says, could 
not have originated her system because : 

" No mortal could first have informed the human 
mind of what the mortal and carnal cannot discern." 3 

That is to say, Mr. Quimby being mortal and carnal 
never could have discovered what Mrs. Eddy found 
out because of her immortality and uncarnality. But 
from this position, when it suits her purpose, she turns 
with " intelligent ease," and claims for herself health 
and other carnal attributes. Thus answering allega- 
tions that she was " sick, and unable to speak a loud 
word," Mrs. Eddy says : 

" Lecturing, writing, preaching, teaching, etc., give 

1 "New York Times, June 5, 1899, anc * other journals of the time. 

2 " Retrospection and Introspection," pp. 38, 39. 
3 " Retrospection and Introspection," p. 44. 



50 CHEISTIAN SCIENCE. 

fair proof that my shadow is not growing less and sub- 
stance is taking larger proportions." l 

This boast puts her in a "parlous state" under her 
own definitions : 

"The physical senses or sensuous nature I called 
error and shadow. Soul I denominated substance be- 
cause soul alone is truly substantial." 2 

Having discovered Christian Science, it next became 
necessary to exploit the discovery and Mrs. Eddy went 
about the task systematically. 

" In 1867 I introduced the first purely metaphysical 
system of healing since the Apostolic days. I begun 
by teaching one student Christian Science Mind-heal- 
ing. From this seed grew the Massachusetts Meta- 
physical College in Boston, chartered in 1881. No 
charter was granted for similar purposes af *ter 1883. 
It is the only College hitherto for teaching the pa- 
thology of spiritual power, alias the Science of Mind- 
healing." 3 

She does not recite her charter or its purpose ; and 
what she omits to say is often more significant than 
what she says. But the records of the Commonwealth 
contain the instrument, which does not mention either 
Christian Science or any new discovery, but simply 
incorporates a College for the purpose of " teaching 
pathology, ontology, therapeutics, moral science, meta- 
physics and their adaptation to the treatment of dis- 
ease." This charter 4 was granted under an Act con- 
cerning Associations for Eeligious, Charitable, Educa- 

1 " Miscellaneous Writings," p. 238. 

2 " Retrospection and Introspection," p. 90. 
3 " Retrospection and Introspection," p. 55. 
4 See frontispiece. 



THE CASE AGAINST CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 51 

tional and other purposes, 1 under which were organ- 
ized four other colleges mentioned in the Fifth Annual 
Eeport of the Illinois Board of Health 2 as fraudulent. 
This Act was subsequently merged into Chapter 115 
of the Public Statutes. Owing to the shameless 
manufacture and sale of diplomas, the so-called " anti- 
diploma law" was enacted in 1883, 3 prohibiting so- 
cieties organized for medical purposes under that stat- 
ute from conferring degrees or issuing diplomas, unless 
specially authorized by the Legislature so to do. Con- 
ferment of degrees in violation of this law was made 
punishable by a fine of not less than $500 nor more 
than $1,000 ; and here would seem to be sufficient ex- 
planation of the facts that " no charter was granted 
for similar purposes after 1883," and that Mrs. Eddy 
came in the end, as we shall see presently, to enter- 
tain "conscientious scruples about diplomas." 

Mrs. Eddy's institution, if we may believe her, 
prospered marvellously. Its course was short, its 
faculty small, its tuition fees greater than those of 
Harvard, Yale or Columbia. Its instruction was con- 
tained in one text-book. Its classes were only three 
in number, the primary, the normal and the obstetric. 
Mrs. Eddy seems to have taught them all ; and why 
not, since one principle applies to all cases, whether 
of fevers, wounds, difficult labors or any other forms 
of error in mortal mind ? So far as appears from 
" Eetrospection and Introspection," the only other 

1 Ch. 375, Acts 1874; embodied later in Ch. 115, Public Statutes. 

2 Excelsior, Bellevue, Medical Department of American University of 
Boston, First Medical College of American Health Society. 

3 Act June 30, 1883. — Dr. Booth in 1893 was sent to prison for selling 
in New York the Excelsior's diplomas. 



52 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 

teachers were her last husband, Asa G. Eddy, who 
taught two terms, her adopted son, Ebenezer J. Foster 
Eddy, 1 who taught one term, and a military gentle- 
man, of whom she says : 

" General Erastus 1ST. Bates taught one primary 
class in 1889, after which I judged it best to close the 
institution." 2 

It made no particular difference in what class stu- 
dents studied. The primary instruction was all suffi- 
cient, and even that was unnecessary ; for Mrs. Eddy 
expressly says : 

" A Primary class student richly imbued with the 
spirit of Christ, is a better healer and teacher than a 
formal class student who partakes less of his love. 
Having received my instructions in the Primary class 
and afterward studied thoroughly 'Science and Health ,' 
the student should not hesitate to enter upon this priv- 
ileged Gospel work, and so fulfil the command of 
Christ. Yea, an apt Bible scholar and a consecrated 
Christian by deeply dipping into my last revised 
'Science and Health? may even enter this field of 
labor without any personal instruction,— heneficially 
to himself and the race." 3 

The curriculum consisted of only twelve lessons, 
lasting half a day each and extending over three 
weeks. The tuition fee was three hundred dollars. 
Mrs. Eddy admits that she was staggered when this 
sum suggested itself to her. But God, notwithstand- 
ing her unselfishness, led her to try the experiment 
and it succeeded. We are not burlesquing; that is 

1 This gentleman, according to the Arena^ has renounced both Mrs. 
Eddy's name and her nonsense. 

2 " College and Church," " Retrospection and Introspection," p. 55. 
3 " College Closed," " Retrospection and Introspection," p. 60, 6i, 



THE CASE AGAINST CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 53 

impossible; her own words fairly travesty bur- 
lesque. 

" When God impelled me to set a price on my in- 
struction in Christian Science Mind-healing, I could 
think of no financial equivalent for an impartation of 
a knowledge of that divine power which heals ; but I 
was led to name three hundred dollars as the price for 
each pupil in one course of lessons at my college, — a 
startling sum for tuition lasting barely three weeks. 
This amount greatly troubled me. I shrank from 
asking it, but was finally led, by a strange Providence, 
to accept this fee. 

" God has since shown me, in multitudinous ways, 
the wisdom of this decision ; and I beg disinterested 
people to ask my loyal students if they consider three 
hundred dollars any real equivalent for my instruc- 
tion during twelve half days or even in half as many 
lessons. Nevertheless, my list of indigent charity 
scholars is very large, and I have had as many as 
seventeen in one class." x 

Why should her " students " have grumbled at the 
price ? Keputable medical colleges require their stu- 
dents to study for years before conferring degrees 
upon them. They also require of them, before ad- 
mission, preliminary education. Most of the States 
forbid unlicensed persons to practice medicine, and 
some exact a State examination of medical graduates 
as prerequisite to license. But here was a school pre- 
tending to teach, under the guise of religion, an in- 
fallible method of cure to any one able to read a 
single book of nonsense. The head of the college, 
having avowed that, by the very operation of her new 
discovery, she had forgotten what little she had 

* " Retrospection and Introspection," p. 64. 



54 



CHKISTIAltf SCIENCE. 



learned from books, naturally required no preliminary 
education of her disciples. On the contrary, she ex- 
pressly discouraged it, as appears from this question 
and answer : 

" What can prospective students of the College take 
for preliminary studies ? Do you regard the study of 
literature and languages as objectionable ? 

"* Persons contemplating a course at the Massachu- 
setts Metaphysical College, can prepare for it through 
no books except the Bible and ' Science and Health 
with Key to the Scriptures.' Man-made theories are 
narrow, else extravagant, and always materialistic." * 

Again she says : 

" I recommend students not to read so-called scien- 
tific works, antagonistic to Christian Science, which 
advocate materialistic systems ; because such works 
and words becloud the right sense of Metaphysical 
Science." 2 

Having thus impressed the duty of ignorance upon 
her disciples, she dubbed them, within three weeks or 
less, in consideration of the fee of $300, doctors of 
Christian Science, and bade them treat all diseases. 
The price was cheap enough. Buchanan's notorious 
college offered no easier terms ; and it was not strange if 
her institution prospered ; but Mrs. Eddy probably does 
not underestimate its prosperity when she says that 
just before its dissolution, 300 students were clamor- 
ing for admission. Assume this to be true, then, at 
$300 each, these " students " would have paid $90,000 
for twelve half-days' instruction, or $7,500 a half-day ! 
Why was this Golconda closed ? From unselfishness 
and conscientious scruples about diplomas ! 

1 " Miscellaneous Writings, " p. 64. 

3 « Admonition," " Retrospection and Introspection," p. 96, 



THE CASE AGAINST CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 55 

" The apprehension of what has been, and must be, 
the final outcome of material organization, which 
wars with Love's spiritual compact, caused me to 
dread the unprecedented popularity of my College. 
Students from all over our Continent and from Eu- 
rope were flooding the school. At this time there 
were over three hundred applications from students 
desiring to enter the college, and applicants were rap- 
idly increasing. Example had shown the dangers 
arising from being placed on earthly pinnacles. Even 
goodness shuns whatever involves material means for 
the promotion of spiritual ends. 

"In view of all this, a meeting was called of the 
Board of Directors of my college, who, being informed 
of my intention, unanimously voted that the school be 
discontinued. . . . 

" The Massachusetts Metaphysical College drew its 
breath from me, but I was yearning for retirement. 
The question was, Who else could sustain this institute, 
under all that was aimed at its vital purpose, the 
establishment of genuine Christian Science Healing. 
My conscientious scruples about diplomas, the recent 
experience of the church fresh in my thoughts, and 
the growing conviction that every one should build 
on his own foundation, subject to the one builder and 
maker, God, — all these considerations moved me to 
close my flourishing school." 1 

Does not this explanation over-tax credulity ? Was 
any other college ever closed because of its " unprec- 
edented popularity " ? Was it the anti-diploma law 
that was " aimed at its vital purpose " ? Why is it, 
too, that notwithstanding these " conscientious scruples 
about diplomas" a great number of persons, male and 
female, still tack to their names the symbolic letters 
"0. S." and " C. S. D." recently acquired upon what 

i " Retrospection and Introspection," pp. 60, 61. 



56 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 

authority it is hard to say, unless it be the right of any 
free-born citizen, in the absence of prohibitory legisla- 
tion, to assume any title that strikes the fancy and 
appropriate all the " symbolic letters " of the alpha- 
bet ? Having thus fully equipped her pupils, Mrs. 
Eddy encouraged them to settle down in great cities, 
not alone for the glory of God, but for this practical 
reason : 

" The population of our principal cities is ample to 
supply many practitioners, teachers and preachers 
with work." * 

And in order that they might " enter this field of 
labor beneficially to themselves," the shrewd Mother 
thus taught : 

" Christian Science demonstrates that the patient 
who pays whatever he is able to pay for being healed is 
more apt to recover than he who withholds a slight equiv- 
alent/or health" 2 

And yet these people deny in Court, when arraigned 
for unlawful practice of medicine and manslaughter, 
that they demand fees for their services ! 

When was so sordid a doctrine ever preached by 
medical men? What standing would a physician 
have who should teach that the cure depends upon 
the fee? Is this preachment inspired by God or 
Mammon, by Unselfishness or Greed ? Whatever its 
inspiration, it has been so well lived up to that its 
" discoverer " proudly exclaims : 

" In the early history of Christian Science, among 
my thousands of students few were wealthy. Now 

1 " Admonition," " Retrospection and Introspection," p, 102. 
8 " Miscellaneous Writings," pp. 300, 301. 



THE CASE AGAINST CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 57 

Christian Scientists are not indigent ; and their com- 
fortable fortunes are acquired by healing mankind, 
morally, physically, spiritually" l 

With one or two more quotations to illustrate the 
divine elegance and grace, of which Mr. Norton 
speaks, and the method by which the new system of 
healing is advertised, we may leave behind us very 
cheerfully Mrs. Eddy and all her works. The " Mis- 
cellaneous Writings " are made up in about equal pro- 
portions of answers to questions, letters and essays, 
doggerel rhymes and advertising certificates ; one or 
two excerpts will illustrate the author's facility in 
each department of her work. To one who asks : 
" Has Mrs. Eddy lost her power to heal ? " she replies 
modestly : 

" Has the sun forgotten to shine and the planets to 
revolve around it ? Who is it that discovered, dem- 
onstrated and teaches Christian Science ? That one, 
whoever it be, does understand something of what 
cannot be lost." 2 

To the pertinent question : " How does Mrs. Eddy 
know that she has read and studied correctly if one 
must deny the evidences of the senses ; she had to use 
her eyes to read ? " She answers : 

" Having eyes ye see not ! I read the inspired page 
through a higher than mortal sense. As matter, the 
eye cannot see • and as mortal mind it is a belief that 
sees. I may read the Scriptures through a belief of 
eyesight, but I must spiritually understand them to 
interpret their science." 3 

1 Preface to " Miscellaneous Writings," p. vii. 

2 " Miscellaneous Writings," p. 54. 
9 " Miscellaneous Writings," p. 58. 



58 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 

Comment upon this would gild refined gold. 

Another answer we quote with hesitation, and only 
because it is thoroughly typical. We fear that ordi- 
nary mortal minds will find it not divinely graceful 
and elegant but rather vulgar and grossly irreverent, 
offensive to good taste and shocking to piety. 

"-Are both prayer and drugs necessary to heal ? " 
says the interlocutor, and Mrs. Eddy replies : "It is 
difficult to say how much one can do for himself, 
whose faith is divided between Catnip and Christ ; but 
not so difficult to know that if he were to serve one 
master he could do vastly more." 1 

Mrs. Eddy's rhetorical flowers are of the gayest, 
and would have delighted Mrs. Malaprop. One of 
the most " hopelessly original " occurs in a warning 
against Animal Magnetism, the specialty of P. P. 
Quimby, but now considered by Mrs. Eddy, his late 
patient, to be the "chief delusion," of which the 
" honest Christian Scientist " must rid himself before 
he can heal : 

"For it is a Delilah who would lead him into the 
toils of the enemy, where Cerberus (the apt symbol of 
Animal Magnetism) waits to devour the self -deceived." 2 

Against Delilah and Cerberus thus conspiring, one 
would be justified in combining with " an allegory 
from the banks of the Mle." She delights in original 
martial similes, possibly from association with Gen. 
Erastus jST. Bates. Thus she says : 

" As the pioneer of Christian Science I stood alone 
in this conflict, endeavoring to smite error with the 

^'Miscellaneous Writings," pp. 51, 52. 
2 " Retrospection and Introspection," p. 73, 



THE CASE AGAINST CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 59 

falchion of Truth. The rare bequests of Christian 
Science are costly, and they have won fields of battle 
from which the dainty borrower would have fled." 1 

This enlistment of " bequests " in active service is 
more novel than Christian Science itself. In view of 
their cost and courage they seem to be a sort of Hes- 
sians. Again she writes : 

" With armor on, I continue the march, command 
and counter-command, meanwhile interluding with 
loving thought this afterpiece of battle. Supported, 
cheered, I take my pen and pruning- book, to ' learn 
war no more,' and with strong wing to lift my readers 
above the smoke of conflict into light and liberty." 2 

Why should she persist in marching, fully armed, 
commanding and counter-commanding " with intelli- 
gent ease," if the battle is over ? If it is still on, why 
interlude its afterpiece, grasp pen and pruning-hook 
and, at the same time, lift readers on a strong wing ? 
It is all sadly puzzling. 

Criticism of Mrs. Eddy's poetry we shall not again 
venture upon. The March Review timidly suggested 
that, in rhyming " debris " with " un weary," " ween " 
with "dream," "now thus" with "hails us," and 
" deep " with " complete," 3 the gifted author, while 
showing great boldness and originality, had departed 
from ordinary rhyming conventions. But this posi- 
tion was demolished by a shot from the Christian 
Science Sentinel, of April 20th, 1899. 

"His condemnations are exactly like those usually 
applied to Browning in regard to rhyme and meaning, 

1 " Retrospection and Introspection," p. 38. 

2 Preface to " Miscellaneous Writings," p. x. 

3 See page 18. 



60 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 

but no mother will find fault with the following coup- 
let from ' The Mother's Evening Prayer ' : 

"'Thou love that guards the nestling's faltering flight! 
Keep thou my child on upward wing to-night.' " 

We frankly admit that no mother would find fault 
with that couplet — unless she knew how to parse sim- 
ple English sentences ; and we despair of answering 
the argument that because Browning nods doggerel is 
poetry. 

But however obscure Mrs. Eddy may be in her 
poetry and controversial writings, she adopts, in that 
part of " Miscellaneous Writings " devoted to adver- 
tising her business, a clear style so remarkably like 
that of another famous lady of Lynn that it has caused 
her to be called " the Lydia Pinkham of the Soul." 
The certificates of cures about to be quoted are in- 
cluded in Mrs. Eddy's " copyrighted " works ; and we 
assume this to indicate authorship, for one as scrupu- 
lous as she on this point would scarcely copyright the 
productions of others. l 

J. B. H. writes : 

" I am glad to tell you how I was healed. Beliefs 
of consumption, dyspepsia, neuralgia, piles, tobacco, 

1 Since this paper's first appearance, Mr. F. W. Peabody of Boston, has 
called attention to certain dates, as evidence that Mrs. Eddy's testimonials 
are not always written by their ostensible signers at the times alleged. 
The March Review mentioned the cure by that lady, one afternoon, of a 
long-standing bowel complaint, in a baby eighteen months old, which ate 
heartily of cabbage that night before retiring. The certificate of this feat 
appears on page 200 of Science and Health, edition of 1887. (See page 
27.) It is signed L. C. Edgecomb, is dated " Lynn, June, 1873," and 
attributes the cure to " Mrs. Eddy " eo nomine. But in 1873 Mother was, 
presumably, named Patterson. She does not pretend to have married 
Mr. Eddy until 1877. Is. this discrepancy of dates due to lapse of memory 
on the part of the person in charge of the certificate department, or was 
L. C. Edgecomb's gift of prophecy as remarkable as the Edgecomb baby's 
digestive apparatus ? 



THE CASE AGAINST CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 61 

and bad language held me in bondage for many years. 
Doctors that were consulted did nothing to relieve me, 
and 1 constantly grew worse. Nearly two years ago 
a lady told me that if I would read a book called 
' Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures,' I 
w r ould be healed. I told her I would ' go into it for 
all it was worth,' and I have found that it is worth 
all. I got the book, and read day and night : I saw 
that it must be true, and believed that what I could 
not then understand would be made clear later. 

"After some days' reading I was affected with 
drowsiness followed by vomiting. This lasted several 
hours; when I fell into a sleep, and awoke healed." l 

Here is a letter bubbling with unconscious humor. 
It purports to come from a gentleman who owes his 
life to Mrs. Eddy's book, yet fears to imperil his health 
by visiting the author. 

" Dear Madam : — May I thank you for your book, * Science and Health 
with Key to the Scriptures,' and say how much I owe to it — almost my 
very life — at a most critical time. . . . 

" If it were not for the heat of your American summers (I had nine at- 
tacks of dysentery in the last one), and the expense, I should dearly like 
to learn from you personally ; but I must forego this, — at any rate, for the 
present. If you would write me what the cost would be for a course on 
Divine Metaphysics, I would try to manage it later on. 

" Meanwhile, I should be grateful if you would refer me to any one in 
this country who is interested similarly, for I get more kicks than half- 
pence in discussing it. 

" Your obliged friend, 

« (Rev.) I. G. W. Bishop. 
" Bovington Vicarage, 

" Hemel Hempstead, Herts, England." 2 

K. L. H. recites this remarkable and instantaneous 
cure of a child by a few pages of " Science and 
Health." 

" A dear little six-year-old boy of my acquaintance 
was invited by his teacher, with the rest of his class 

1 " Miscellaneous Writings," p. 405. 
8 " Miscellaneous Writings," p. 408. 



62 



CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 



in Kindergarten School, to attend a picnic one after- 
noon. He did not feel that he wanted to go ; seemed 
dumpish, and, according to mortal belief, was not 
well ; at noon, he said he wanted to go to sleep. 

" His mother took him in her lap and began to read 
to him from ' Science and Health, with Key to the 
Scriptures.' Very soon he expressed a wish to go to 
the picnic and did go" L 

We have thus given overabundantly and tediously, 
perhaps, sufficient citations in Mrs. Eddy's own words 
to enable any intelligent person to judge whether he 
is willing to accept her intellectual and spiritual lead- 
ership, and to believe that God waited nineteen hun- 
dred years for her to illuminate, by such jargon as 
" Science and Health," the teachings of Christ, which, 
she bluntly says, could not have been apprehended 
from the Scriptures alone prior to the publication of 
her " Key." It is with a sense of intellectual humilia- 
tion that we have dealt with these dreary and vulgar 
banalities. The excuse for so doing is found, however, 
in such incidents as occurred in the City of ]STew York 
on Sunday, the 28th day of May of this year, 1899, 
when the Metropolitan Opera House was filled with 
an audience, certainly of average intelligence, to hear 
the lecturer already referred to, Mr. Carol Norton, in- 
troduced by a gentleman holding judicial office in the 
State, who declared that legislation directed against 
Christian Science would infringe upon the constitu- 
tional right to religious liberty. While a great num- 
ber in that audience were animated by mere curiosity, 
undoubtedly many accepted in good faith Mrs. Eddy's 
claim to have discovered a new religious truth capable 

1 " Miscellaneous Writings," p. 444. 



THE CASE AGAINST CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 63 

of healing disease in marvellous fashion. It is because 
we cannot bring ourselves to believe that such per- 
sons appreciate the character of their teacher or the 
nature of her pretences that we have been willing 
to reproduce her own account of her life and her 
methods. 

"With those who can accept as divinely inspired the 
absurdities, solecisms and incoherencies of Mrs. Eddy, 
and who think to explain them by saying that ob- 
scurities and errors are to be found in works of the 
great writers, there can be no argument. " Intelligent 
ease " in shifting premises precludes discussion. How 
could the Bishop argue with the genial madman who, 
after introducing himself as George Washington, said 
a few moments later that he was Napoleon Bonaparte ? 
" But," said the Bishop, " a moment ago you were Wash- 
ington." "So I was," said the bedlamite with "in- 
telligent ease," " but by another mother." It is en- 
tirely possible, however, to state the case against this 
pseudo philosophy convincingly to those who are in- 
terested in it because of its alleged miraculous cures. 

First. As a mere religious or philosophic theory, 
Christian Science never would have had any vogue. 
Its fascination lies in its pretended cures. No one 
suggests taking action to restrain it as a form of wor- 
ship. The most that has been suggested in regard to 
it has been that its ignorant votaries should not be al- 
lowed to trifle with the life and health of adults, chil- 
dren and the entire community, by assuming the treat- 
ment of all classes of disease, including surgical cases 
and contagious and infectious maladies. To say it is in- 
fringement of religious liberty to require the same skill 



64 CHEISTIAK SCIENCE. 

and knowledge of Christian Scientists, engaging in the 
business of curing the sick for hire, as is required of 
Presbyterians or Catholics in the same business shows 
ignorance of the constitutional doctrine of the Mor- 
mon cases, or carelessness of statement, or such wil- 
ful misstatement as Mrs. Eddy personally was guilty 
of when she said that infringement of copyright is 
theft, punishable criminally. 

Second. Christian Science has no healing power 
peculiar to itself, as distinguished from faith cure or 
any other method of diverting the mind from the ills 
of the body. If it had such divine power, its applica- 
tion would be universal ; it would be effective in sur- 
gery as in physic. Mrs. Eddy pretends that this uni- 
versal applicability exists ; but, in admitting that for 
the present " it is better to leave the adjustment, of 
broken bones and dislocations to the fingers of sur- 
geons," l she confesses the falsity of her treatment and 
the impotence of her method. Mr. Norton has re- 
cently shown the same lack of faith and of ability to 
match promise with performance. Having offered to 
give medical proof of cures of cancer, locomotor 
ataxia, etc., he was asked to name the diagnostician 
and describe the treatment, the precautions to exclude 
other factors of cure, and the patients' present condi- 
tion. He produced in fact no testimony of evidential 
force to trained minds, but only certificates of Christian 
Scientists similar in kind and value to the " puffs " 
above quoted from " Miscellaneous Writings." He 
was asked how he would treat these cases of emer- 
gency : a cranial wound caused by a falling brick ; 

> Page 28. 



THE CASE AGAINST CHKISTIAN SCIENCE. 65 

strangulation of a child from swallowing a fish bone ; 
exposure of a child to confluent smallpox ; severing 
of a child's artery by a cable car accident ; fracture 
of a baby's skull by a fall. He was also asked if in 
curing cancers he made differential diagnosis between 
them, boils, carbuncles, etc. Lest he be misquoted 
his written words are given : 

" I make no diagnosis except along the lines of con- 
sistent mental therapeutics. An expert in mental 
therapeutics will naturally know the character of this 
diagnosis. Discord is discord. Pain is pain. Dis- 
ease is disease. The principle that cures one if rightly 
applied, will citre all. This is the beginning and end 
of rational mental healing. In relation to mental 
treatment for a severed artery, I said simply that 1 Re- 
lieved- the proper application of Mind power would do 
the same work, if not better, than any other method. 
I beg that you quote me correctly, if you ever quote 
me, and I most thoroughly disagree with the under- 
standing you got about diagnosis. In reply to the 
list of questions that you wrote to me in a recent let- 
ter, I have but to repeat my recent utterances in a 
letter to you, that I prefer to shelve them, because to 
answer them would bring about wholly indifferent re- 
sults." 

The italics are his and ours. To say that Christian 
Science is efficacious if rightly or properly applied 
leaves open a wide door. To shelve the other ques- 
tions confesses inability to answer them without mak- 
ing fatal admissions. To say " Pain is pain. Disease 
is disease " flatly contradicts Mrs. Eddy. 1 

1 The correspondence is more fully set out in a letter to the New York 
Sun published on June 9, 1899, an d appearing here in the appendix, 
(pps. 165, 182). Mr. Norton has never, to the writer's knowledge, denied 
the fairness or traversed the accuracy of its statements. 



66 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 

Third. Why is it then that Christian Science is 
credited with these marvellous cures, if its foremost 
professors cannot adduce any better proofs of them 
than are afforded by certificates no better in manner 
and degree than those accompanying every quack 
nostrum that is advertised. The explanation is 
simple. In perhaps the majority of cases to which 
physicians are called, nothing more is needed than 
regimen and the mental stimulus that comes to the 
patient with knowledge that he is under skilled care. 
If a physician falls ill, he calls another to attend him, 
chiefly for the sake of this mental stimulus and to 
eliminate the personal factor. Drugs and surgical 
appliances may be needed in only a small proportion of 
cases ; but, like a revolver in Texas, they are needed 
greatly when the occasion arises. Many diseases are 
self limited, many are feigned, or due to a fixed idea 
which may operate even in surgery, as when a pa- 
tient, under the erroneous impression that his leg is 
broken, unconsciously inhibits muscular action and is 
unable to put foot to the ground, until dispossessed of 
the inhibitory idea by mechanical devices or any 
method, even Christian Science, changing the mental 
attitude. In all such cases, whatever removes the 
mental tension may be beneficial. Many patients 
would get well without any attendance at all. To 
take an illustration: Child-birth, in which Christian 
Scientists profess great success, is not a disease, but 
the operation of a normal function. In the absence 
of complications, attendance is not necessary although 
it may be desirable. But in the presence of certain 
complications, the very highest skill is necessary to 



THE CASE AGAINST CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 67 

save life. Will any sane person say that, because in 
the vast majority of cases children may be brought 
into the world safely under the attendance of a Chris- 
tian Scientist, such a person is to be pardoned who 
undertakes such a complication as that of placenta 
praevia with neither medical skill nor knowledge? 
Will any parent be willing, in case a child's artery is 
severed, to call a Christian Scientist rather than a sur- 
geon ? Upon the answers to these questions depends 
the acceptance by reasoning persons of Mrs. Eddy's 
theory and claim that her followers can cure all forms 
of human maladies and injuries, and that they should 
be allowed to treat medical and surgical cases without 
the responsibility for malpractice that rests upon 
medical men. 

We devoutly believe that Mrs. Eddy is an instru- 
ment in the hands of God, not for the healing of the 
nations, but to humble us intellectually by showing 
that, at the end of the nineteenth century, professedly 
intelligent persons can be as easily duped by her as 
their forebears were by Cagliostro at the close of the 
eighteenth. 



Ill 



MANSLAUGHTER, CHEISTIAIST SCIENCE AND THE 

LAW 1 

The recent death of Mr. Harold Frederic under the 
treatment of a Christian Scientist, and the latter's in- 
dictment by an English jury, have renewed the dis- 
cussion by professional and lay journals of what is 
and what should be the bearing of the law upon such 
cases. 

The New York Times, of which he was correspond- 
ent, writes editorially of " Faith-Cure Murders ; " the 
Sun of "Manslaughter by Christian Science." The 
current law journals comment upon the case. Un- 
fortunately such happenings are neither modern nor 
rare. 

Coincidently with Mr. Frederic's death from pneu- 
monia in England, the newspapers also report the 
deaths of Messrs. Kershaw in Tacoma, and McDowell 
in Cincinnati, and Mrs. Brown of "Washington; the 
first of pneumonia, the second of typhoid fever, the 
last of an unnamed malady — all the diseases being 
complicated with Christian Science. It is only Fred- 
eric's prominence as a journalist and fiction writer 
that brings his case nearer home to the multitude. 

The ordinary quack is content to lay claim to some 

* New York Medical Record, Nov. 26, 1898. 

69 



70 CHEISTIAIST SCIENCE. 

special skill or knowledge in the use of natural methods 
or remedies. Thus in February, 1806, one John M. 
Crous induced the same Legislature of New York that 
in the following April chartered the existing county 
and State medical societies to authorize by special act 
the purchase for $1,000 and publication in the State 
papers of his " perfect and infallible remedy and cure 
for hydrophobia or canine madness." And a wonder- 
ful remedy it was. x 

In the following year an act (ch. 104, 11. 1807) was 
passed prohibiting unlicensed practice of medicine; 
with the proviso, however, that it should not be con- 

1 Here is the prescription, and it certainly seems adequate to put an end 
to hydrophobia or any other malady : 

" First : Take one ounce of the jawbone of a dog, burned and pulver- 
ized, or pounded to fine dust. 

" Secondly: Take the false tongue of a newly foaled colt; let that be 
also dried and pulverized ; and, 

" Thirdly : Take one scruple of verdigris, which is raised on the sur- 
face of old copper by lying in the moist earth ; the coppers of George I. 
or II. are the purest and best. Mix these ingredients together, and if the 
person be an adult or full grown, take one common teaspoonful a day, 
and so in proportion for a child according to its age. In one hour after 
take the filings of the one-half of a copper of the above kind, if to be 
had ; if not, then a small increased quantity of any baser metal of the 
kind ; this to be taken in a small quantity of water. 

"The next morning, fasting (or before eating), repeat the same as be- 
fore. This, if complied with after the biting of a dog, and before the 
symptoms of madness, will effectually prevent any appearance of disorder; 
but after the symptoms shall appear a physician must immediately be ap- 
plied to, to administer the following, viz: 

" Three drachms of the verdigris of the kind before mentioned, mixed 
with half an ounce of calomel, to be taken at one dose. This quantity 
the physician need not fear to administer, as the reaction of the venom 
will then diffuse through the whole system of the patient, neutralize con- 
siderably the powerful quality of the medicine ; and, 

" Secondly : If in four hours thereafter the patient is not completely 
relieved, administer four grains of pure opium or one hundred and twenty 
drops of liquid laudanum. 

" N. B. — The patient must be careful to avoid the use of milk for sev- 
eral days after taking any of the foregoing medicine. 

* John M. ■Crou^' 



MANSLAUGHTER AND THE LAW. 71 

strued to debar any one from using, or applying for 
the benefit of the sick, roots or herbs the growth 
or product of the United States. This exception fa- 
vored at once the principle of protection to the indus- 
try of home herbs and the teachings of the Thomso- 
nian or botanic school of medicine, founded upon the 
simple, obvious theory that mineral remedies are in- 
jurious because, their nature being to remain in the 
earth, they tend to drag man down to the grave; 
while herbs, having by nature an upward, skyward 
thrust, tend, on the contrary, to the advancement of 
those whose midst they penetrate. 

This system, once as popular as Christian Science, 
furnished the leading American case on manslaughter 
by medical malpractice, that of Commonwealth v. 
Thomson (6 Mass. 134). It there appeared that Sam- 
uel Thomson, founder of the system, undertook to 
cure " all fevers, whether black, grey, green, or yel- 
low." His staple remedies were " coffee," so-called, 
" well my gristle," and " ram-cats." Being summoned 
on Jan. 2, 1809, to attend Ezra Lovett, ill of " a cold," 
he ordered a fire built, put Lovett's feet on a stove of 
hot coals, wrapped him in a blanket, and, with a 
powder given in water, " puked " him — to use the 
simple language of the day — violently thrice within 
half an hour, meantime administering copiously the 
warm "coffee." He then put Lovett to bed, and 
sweated and " puked " him pretty steadily for three 
days, the patient growing weaker and weaker, until, 
poor soul ! he could puke no more. Then Thomson 
asked "how far down the medicine had got," and, 
Lovett indicating his chest, the quack said that the 



72 OHEISTIAK SCIEKCE. 

medicine " would soon get down and unscrew his 
navel." On the third day the patient " lost his mind 
and went into convulsions," which condition lasted 
until the eighth day, Jan. 10, when he died. The 
" coffee " proved to be a decoction of marshrosemary 
and the bark of the bay berry bush; the powder was 
Indian tobacco or Lobelia inflata. There was no evi- 
dence that defendant had killed any one else ; on the 
contrary, there was testimony of benefit in one case 
from his treatment. The court, therefore, did not put 
him to his defence, but, ruling that the commonwealth 
had failed to make out a case even of manslaughter, 
charged the jury to this effect : Deceased, beyond 
reasonable doubt, lost his life by defendant's unskil- 
ful treatment. But there could be no murder, unless 
the prisoner was wilfully regardless of his social duty 
and determined on mischief, of which there was no 
proof ; on the contrary, his intent was to cure. Nei- 
ther could there be manslaughter ; for, although de- 
fendant's ignorance was very apparent, nevertheless, 
if he honestly intended to cure, he could not be guilty 
of that crime on account of death unexpectedly ensu- 
ing from his treatment, unless he was engaged in an 
unlawful act ; and there was no law in Massachusetts 
forbidding any man, honestly intending to cure, from 
prescribing for a sick man with the latter's consent. 
The court cited Lord Hale as authority for the propo- 
sition that, " if a physician, whether licensed or not, 
gives a person a potion, without any intent of doing 
him any bodily hurt, but with intent to cure or pre- 
vent a disease, and, contrary to the expectation of the 
physician, it kills him, he is not guilty of murder or 



MANSLAUGHTER AND THE LAW. 73 

manslaughter ; " and, accordingly, laid down this law 
for the case : 

" The death of a man, killed by- voluntarily follow- 
ing a medical prescription, cannot be adjudged a 
felony in the party prescribing, unless he, however 
ignorant of medical science in general, had so much 
knowledge or probable information of the fatal tend- 
ency of the prescription that it may be reasonably 
presumed by the jury to be the effect of obstinate, 
wilful rashness, at the least, and not of an honest in- 
tention and expectation to cure." 

The court further said that if the solicitor-general 
had proved, as he promised to do in his opening, that 
Thomson had killed others by his treatment, it would 
have been left to the jury to say whether on the 
whole evidence they would sustain the charge of man- 
slaughter ; which they might justly have done if they 
had found that defendant acted from " obstinate rash- 
ness and foolhardy presumption, although without in- 
tent to do Lovett bodily harm ; " for it would not 
have been lawful for him again to administer a 
medicine of which he had such fatal experience." 
Upon this reasoning Thomson was acquitted ; and his 
case having proved, as a precedent, a strong shield for 
manslaughtering charlatans, by establishing what has 
been called the humane American rule as contrasted 
with the strict rule of common law, it is well to state 
succinctly the reasons why he escaped conviction, 
viz : (1) because there was no statute in Massachu- 
setts prohibiting medical practice by the ignorant 
and unlicensed ; (2) because there was no proof that 
Thomson (a) knew his treatment to be dangerous or 
(b) had any other intent than to cure in good faith. 



74 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 

In 1842 the question arose in New York, upon an 
application for a bill of discovery, in Marsh v. Davison 
(9 Paige 580), whether it was slanderous to have said 
of complainant that he was guilty of malpractice as a 
cancer doctor and had killed a woman in Schoharie. 
Davison not being licensed to practice, the court held 
that— inasmuch as he might be guilty of man- 
slaughter, for that reason, if the patient died under 
his treatment — the words might be slanderous. 

It thus appears that — even accepting the benign 
rule of Thomson's case, which, as we shall see pres- 
ently, was ill stated — wherever a statute makes the 
unlicensed practice of medicine a misdemeanor, if 
death result from the treatment of a non-licentiate he 
is guilty of manslaughter at least, no matter how 
honest his intent. This is the rule of common law 
and of the New York penal code, which defines as 
manslaughter the killing of one human being by the 
act, procurement, or omission of another, without de- 
sign to effect death, by a person engaged in commit- 
ting or attempting to commit a misdemeanor affecting 
the person or property, either of the person killed or 
of another. 

In 1844 the case of Eice v. The State (8 Mo. 561) 
was decided in Missouri. Eice, a Thomsonian, under- 
took by the same methods used on Lovett to cure Mrs. 
Keithley of sciatica. She had not been so well for 
years as when he began to treat her, and was within 
six weeks of giving birth to her fourth child. Under 
his system she fell into premature labor and died 
within about ten days. He was convicted of man- 
slaughter ; but the appellate court, adopting the rule 



MANSLAUGHTER AKD THE LAW. 75 

in Thomson's case, the facts being substantially the 
same, reversed the judgment. 

In 1881 another case arose, in Iowa, State v. Schulz 
(55 la. 628). Schulz treated a sick woman by acu- 
puncture and an irritating oil, according to the sys- 
tem of Herr Baunscheidt, who, having been much 
benefited by the bitings of small insects, sought to 
give the world, for a consideration, a simulacrum of 
his experience. Defendant admitted that he did not 
know the composition of the oil, that being Baun- 
scheidt's secret. The patient died. Schulz claimed 
that if he had not been interfered with he could have 
helped her, and produced twenty-three witnesses to 
testify that Baunscheidtismus, as administered by him, 
had benefited them. Schulz was convicted, but the 
appellate court reversed the judgment, following the 
cases of Thomson and Kice, and expressed this con- 
clusion : " The interests of society will be subserved 
by holding a physician civilly liable in damages for 
the consequences of his ignorance, without imposing 
upon him criminal liabilities when he acts with good 
motives and honest intentions." The adoption of this 
theory by the New York statute of 1844 enabled 
quackery, in the words of Beardesley, J., to " boast its 
triumphant and complete establishment by law" 
(Bailey v. Mogg, 4 Den. 60). And the people of 
Iowa, instead of adhering to it, have passed, since the 
Schulz case, a law forbidding medical practice to the 
unlicensed. 

Notwithstanding these acceptances of the rule in 
Thomson's case by other jurisdictions as sound law, 
the Supreme Court of Massachusetts, wherein it 



f6 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 

originated, has since held, in Commonwealth v. Pierce 
(138 Mass. 165, A. D. 1884), that the accuracy of its 
report was doubtful and its law open to criticism. 
The facts in Pierce's case were these : Defendant held 
himself out as a physician. There was no more law in 
Massachusetts to prevent him from so doing in 1884 
than there had been to prevent Thomson's like preten- 
sion in 1809. Being called to a sick woman, Mary 
Bemis, he caused her, she consenting, to be kept for some 
three days swathed in flannel underclothing, saturated 
with kerosene. Under this treatment she died in great 
misery. There was evidence in the case that in some 
instances similar treatment by defendant had resulted 
favorably, but also that in one it had burned and 
blistered the flesh, as in the case of deceased. De- 
fendant's counsel at trial asked the court to charge, 
following the rule in Thomson's case, that defendant 
could not be convicted unless it were proven beyond 
reasonable doubt that death resulted from his treat- 
ment and that he had such knowledge or probable in- 
formation of the fatal tendency of his prescription as 
to justify the jury in presuming that death was the 
effect of his obstinate or wilful recklessness, and not 
of an honest intent and expectation to cure. This re- 
quest was refused, defendant was convicted, and his 
conviction affirmed by the appellate court, who, by 
Holmes, J., said that the language of Thomson's case 
relied upon by defendant — viz, that " to constitute 
manslaughter the killing must have been a conse- 
quence of some unlawful act. Now there is no law 
which prohibits any man from prescribing for a sick 
person, with his consent, if he honestly intends to cure 



MANSLAUGHTER AND THE LAW. 77 

him by his prescription " — was ambiguous and wrong, 
if it meant that the killing must be the consequence 
of an act which is unlawful for independent reasons 
apart from its likelihood to kill." " Such," continued 
the court, " may once have been the law ; but for a 
long time it has been just as fully, and latterly, we 
may add, much more willingly, recognized that a man 
may commit murder or manslaughter by doing other- 
wise lawful acts recklessly, as that he may by doing 
acts unlawful for independent reasons, from which 
death accidentally ensues." Thomson's case, it was 
said, did not intend to lay down new law, but cited 
and meant to follow Lord Hale, whom it had taken 
too literally, since his lordship admitted that other 
persons might make themselves liable by reckless con- 
duct (I. P. C. 472) ; and why not a physician as well ? 
As to what constitutes criminal recklessness in such 
cases, the court said substantially that the standard is 
not gauged by the actor's belief or idea of danger, but 
by common experience. If the thing done " is gen- 
erally supposed to be universally harmless and only a 
specialist would foresee that in a given case it would 
do damage, a person who did not foresee it and 
who had no warning would not be held liable for 
the harm. . . . The use of the thing must be 
dangerous according to common experience, at least 
to the extent that there is a manifest and appre- 
ciable chance of harm from what is done, in 
view either of the actor's knowledge or of his con- 
scious ignorance. . . . Common experience is 
necessary to the man of ordinary prudence, and a 
man who assumes to act as the defendant did must 



78 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 

have it at his peril. . . . The defendant knew he 
was using kerosene. The jury have found that it was 
applied as the result of foolhardy presumption or gross 
negligence, and that is enough. . . . Indeed, if the 
defendant had known the fatal tendency of the pre- 
scription, he would have been perillously near the line 
of murder." The rule laid down in this carefully 
reasoned case must commend itself to prudent men ; 
for it really amounts only to this — that if one unversed 
and unskilled in medical science and practice under- 
takes, nevertheless, the cure of a patient, and in so 
doing uses remedies or adopts a treatment — whether 
positive or negative ought to make no difference — 
from which there is a manifest and appreciable chance 
of harm according to common experience, he shall be 
held liable for his recklessness and shall not be excused 
by the innocence of his intention. And certainly when 
part of the treatment adopted is the exclusion of proper 
treatment, this is just as harmful as if positively in- 
jurious methods were adopted. It is just as much 
homicide to cause death by starvation by keeping 
food from the victim as to use an active poison. 

How does this principle apply to " Christian 
Science," "faith cure," or any eccentric treatment 
of the sick — not excluding voudoo or the " scandal 
cure " * — that by operating strongly on the mind may 
restore the lost equilibrium ? Is the pursuit of any of 
these methods " practice of medicine " ? 

1 I knew once of a malade imaginaire who for years had drifted 
feebly from bed to lounge and back again. Physicians were in vain. 
One day a friend called and said that the newspapers had gotten hold of a 
bit of history that would interest the nation on the following Sunday. The 
patient leaped from the lounge, took a cab to the steamer office, and by 
Sunday was on the ocean. This is the " scandal cure." 



MANSLAUGHTER AND THE LAW. 79 

While the ordinary quack, who, as has been said, 
pretends only to extraordinary human skill or knowl- 
edge, is, therefore, generally held to be a practitioner 
of medicine, Christian Scientists, who go further and 
pretend to procure for lucre divine intervention by 
their prayers, contend that in thus offering to heal the 
sick, although for hire, they are not practicing medi- 
cine, but observing religious rites, and are therefore 
protected in their practices by constitutional safe- 
guards. "We are thus brought to consider what is the 
"practice of medicine." The answer to this query 
must depend in most instances upon the words of the 
statute and the peculiar circumstances of the case. In 
the New York case of Smith v. Lane (24 Hun, 632, A. 
D. 1881), plaintiff, apparently a masseur, sued for 
agreed fees which defendant refused to pay on the 
ground that plaintiff, not being licensed to practice 
medicine, could not recover compensation for his treat- 
ment, which, as the opinion of the court recites, " con- 
sisted entirely of manipulation with the hand. It was 
performed by rubbing, kneading, and pressure." The 
court said : 

" The practice of medicine is a pursuit very generally 
known and understood, and so also is that of surgery. 
The former includes the application and use of medi- 
cines and drugs for the purpose of curing, mitigating 
or alleviating bodily diseases ; while the functions of 
the latter are limited to manual operations, usually 
performed by surgical instruments or appliances. 
. . . To allow incompetent or unqualified persons 
to administer or apply medical agents, or to perform 
surgical operations, would be highly dangerous to the 
health as well as the lives of the persons who might 



80 CHEISTIAIST SCIENCE. 

be operated upon, and there is reason to believe that 
lasting and serious injuries as well as the loss of life 
have been produced by the improper use of medical 
agents and surgical instruments or appliances. It was 
the purpose and object of the Legislature by this act 
to prevent a continuance of deleterious practices of 
this nature, and to confine the uses of medicine and 
the operations of surgery to a class of persons who, 
upon examination, should be found competent and 
qualified to follow these professional pursuits. No 
such danger could possibly arise from the treatment to 
which the plaintiff's occupation was confined. While 
it might be no benefit, it could hardly be possible thai 
it could result in harm or injury. 

" And for that reason no necessity existed for inter- 
fering with this pursuit by any action on the part of 
the Legislature. It may be that credulous persons 
would be deceived into the employment of the 
plaintiff, and in that manner subjected to imposition. 
But it was no part of the purposes of this act to pre- 
vent persons from being made the subjects of mere 
imposition." 

Either the italicized words are superfluous or they 
contain an implication that if the treatment, in the 
court's opinion, had been capable of causing injury 
like improper medical treatment, the judges would 
have classified it in the same category. 

In Eastman v. State (10 N. E. 97), an Indiana case, 
the court said, on the other hand : " It is the purpose 
of the statute to prevent persons who do not possess 
the necessary qualifications to practice medicine or 
surgery from inflicting injury upon the citizens by 
undertaking to treat diseases, wounds and injuries." 
And again : "The State has an interest in the life and 
health of all its citizens, and the law under examina* 



MANSLAUGHTER AND THE LAW. 81 

tion was framed, not to bestow favors upon a par- 
ticular profession, but to discharge one of the highest 
duties of the State — that of protecting its citizens from 
injury and harm." In People v. Phippin (70 Mich. 
6), the defendant was held to have practiced medicine, 
on proof that he held himself out as "Dr. W. W. 
Phippin, magnetic healer," had attempted to cure the 
sick, and in the case of a child's death had certified 
the cause to be " canker, sore mouth. Duration of 
disease: June 3 to July 22, 1887." In Bibber v. 
Simpson (59 Maine 181), a clairvoyant who gave 
remedies was said to be practicing medicine. So also 
in Nelson v. Harrington (72 Wis. 591). And in New 
York, De Leon, who prescribed for a child, drawing 
its horoscope and giving some rhubarb, was convicted 
of illegal practice of medicine. The administration 
of electricity has also been held to constitute medical 
practice — Davison v. Bohlman (37 Mo. App. 576). 

The Ohio statute provides that " Any person shall 
be regarded as practicing medicine or surgery, within 
the meaning of this act, who shall append the letters 
M. D. or M. B. to his name, or for a fee prescribe, 
direct or recommend for the use of any person any 
drug or medicine or other agency for the treatment, 
cure or relief of any wound, fracture, or bodily injury, 
infirmity or disease." That seems very broad ; but in 
case of Eastman v. State (6 Ohio Dec. 296), it was 
held, in January, 1897, that a "graduate of the school 
of osteopathy of Kirkville, Mo.," was not practicing 
medicine by kneading and manipulations, using only 
his hands and no medicines. The court cited Smith 
v. Lane, and held that the words, " any other agency," 



82 CHEISTIAN SCIENCE. 

were too vague and were limited by the particular 
words, " drug or medicine." * 

The New York statute does not define medical prac- 
tice. Such a definition was framed in the draft of the 
act of 1887, but stricken out because a certain Senator, 
who died shortly afterward, declared that it would in- 
clude an eccentric healer who had saved him from the 
grave. The definition was yielded to save the bill. 

The Nebraska Medical Act defines as a practitioner 
any one " who shall operate on, or profess to heal, or 
prescribe for, or otherwise treat any physical or men- 
tal ailment of another." 

Under this statute arose, in 1894, the case of State 
v. Bus well (40 Neb. 158). The defendant, charged 
with unlawful practice of medicine, claimed to be a 
Christian Scientist, graduated from the Metaphysical 
College of Mrs. Mary B. G. Eddy, of Boston. De- 
fendant offered testimony to cures wrought by him in 
cases of rheumatism, rattlesnake bite, pneumonia and 
scarlet fever — the last in the case of a child, four years 
old. He testified that in eighteen months he had 
treated about one hundred persons, of whom only two 
had died. The accuracy of his diagnosis was not in 
issue. He testified that the text-books of the Christian 
Science Church are the Bible and Mrs. Eddy's work, 
" Science and Health." He denied that in a medical 
sense he treated physical or mental ailments, saying : 
" I understand with God's laws, and not mortal man's." 

1 As the book goes to press it is reported that the Ohio Supreme Court 
has approved this ruling. (Alb. Law Journal, Nov. 1 8, 1899, p. 317.) 
The Illinois Supreme Courts held otherwise, (Eastman v. People, 71 111. 
App. 236), but since this article was written the law of that state has been 
amended to give immunity to Christian senators.- 



MANSLAUGHTER AND THE LAW. 83 

Questioned as to the privilege of patients or parents to 
call in medical aid, he said : " We believe that every- 
one has a right to express their wish, and it is always 
understood that if they prefer some other treatment, 
or some other mode, or some one else to aid them, it 
is their privilege. "We always do that. It is taught 
in our text-books. We never give any medicine ; that 
is entirely contrary to the teaching of Christian 
Science." And this counsel said : " The defendant, 
and those of the same faith with him, believe as a 
matter of conscience that the giving of medicine is a 
sin ; that it is placing faith in the power of material 
things, which belongs alone to Omnipotence. To the 
Christian Scientist, it is as much a violation of the 
laws of God to take drugs for the alleviation of suffer- 
ing or the cure of disease, as for a Methodist clergy- 
man to take the name of his God in vain to relieve his 
overwrought feelings." 

Being asked if he took pay from his patients, he 
said : " As a rule I do not. We tell them we leave 
the question to them and God. . . . Jesus says 
the laborer is worthy of his meat, and we expect that 
those whom we spend our lives for to remunerate us 
for it. If they are not willing to part with the sacri- 
fice themselves, it is not expected that those should 
reap the benefit." 1 Considering that defendant de- 
scribed his treatment as one of prayer, this intimation 
that the answer to prayer would be contingent on 
the payment of the Scientist's fee apparently seemed 
rather blasphemous to the court, who very aptly cited 

1 Cf. Mrs. Eddy's express teaching that patients who pay a good fee, 
p. 56. 



84 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 

two cases from one of the science's text-books, the 
Bible — the former, that of Simon the sorcerer (re- 
ported in Acts viii. 18-23), to whom Peter said, " Thy 
money perish with thee, because thou hast thought 
that the gift of God may be purchased with money ; " 
the second, that of Gehazi (II. Kings v. 20-27), servant 
of Elisha, who, finding that his master had gratui- 
tously cured of leprosy Naaman, the rich Syrian, thus 
establishing a .precedent for dispensary abuses, re- 
marked, " as the Lord liveth, I will run after him, and 
take somewhat of him," and in the end took not only 
a fee but the disease. Upon these precedents the 
Nebraska court ruled thus : 

" The exercise of the art of healing for compensa- 
tion, whether exacted as a fee or expected as a gratu- 
ity, cannot be classed as an act of worship. Neither 
is it the performance of a religious duty, as was 
claimed in the District Court." They further said : 
" The object of the statute is to protect the afflicted 
from the pretensions of the ignorant and avaricious, 
and its provisions are not limited to those who at- 
tempt to follow beaten paths and established usages." 
This, it will be noticed, is very different from the 
view of the New York law taken in the New York 
case of Smith v. Lane and the Ohio case of Eastman 
v. State (supra), as well as from the latest case of the 
kind, State v. Mylod (40 At. 753), decided in Ehode 
Island last July upon these facts: Defendant under- 
took to cure one Hale of malaria arid one Vaughan of 
grip, by apparently engaging in silent prayer ajid giv- 
ing them pamphlets on Christian Science. He received 
a fee of one dollar, but gave no medicines, made no 



MANSLAUGHTER AND THE LAW. 85 

examination, or diagnosis. He testified that he did 
not attempt to cure disease, had no knowledge of 
medicine or surgery, and that his only method was 
"prayer and effort to encourage hopefulness for all 
who come to him in public or private, and whatever 
diseases they imagine they have." The court held, 
citing Smith v. Lane, that in the absence of diagnosis, 
prescription of remedies, or surgical methods there 
was no medical practice. They suggested that if 
Christian Science is practice of medicine, then as a 
school it is entitled to recognition by the State Board, 
and that it would be absurd to hold, under the Ehode 
Island statute which forbids discrimination against 
medical schools, that requirements could be prescribed 
which members of a particular school could not com- 
ply with, since that would be not to discriminate only, 
but to prohibit. 1 And the court distinguished the 
cases of clairvoyant physicians upon the ground that 
therein the defendants had prescribed medicine and 
professed to cure diseases. There seems to be fallacy 
in the implication by the court that any educational 
requirements as a condition of medical license are pro- 
hibitory upon any persons except those who are un- 
able to acquire an education ; and it is quite proper to 
exclude such persons from the ranks of physicians. 

The question is full of difficulty. Every one admits 
the power of mental impulses in nervous diseases ; ad- 
mits nature's healing force that so often cures without 
any attendance at all ; and admits that it would be 
wrong to forbid all recourse to any aid. But this 
much being conceded, are we to admit also that any 

1 See the paper " Christian Science before the Law." Page 91, 



86 CHEISTIAN SCIENCE. 

person should be entitled to take charge of the sick 
merely because he pretends to act under religious be- 
liefs and to abstain from using those remedies and 
methods arrived at by study and investigation ? Are 
we to punish the physician who fails to report yellow 
and scarlet fevers, diphtheria, and other contagious 
disorders, and allow a person who boasts his ignorance 
of medical and sanitary science to treat and conceal 
such cases ? The Christian Scientist, in his madness 
or worse, says that there is no disease but only fear or 
loss of relation to God, which he in his blasphemy 
undertakes to restore, providing he is paid for his 
services. What, then, would his death certificate be ? 
Would it be that Jones was permanently scared ? 
What would his report of a contagious disease be? 
That Brown has a panic, which is likely to spread P 1 

In the case of Reynolds v. United States (98 U. S. 
145, A. D. 1878), the Supreme Court of the nation ap- 
plied common sense to the proposition, that the name 
of religion may be used to cloak either lust or impos- 
ture. Defendant, a member of the so-called Church 
of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, being indicted 
for bigamy, pleaded in defence that the penalty im- 
posed by his church upon its male members who failed 
to practice polygamy " when circumstances would ad- 
mit " was " damnation in the life to come." No such 
dreadful penalty hangs over a Christian Scientist who 
abstains from his lucrative practices. The Supreme 
Court said in Reynolds' case : " Laws are made for 

1 As we go to press an entire church of Christian Scientists in Georgia 
has been fined for disobedience of the vaccination law, from which action 
appeal has been taken. 



MANSLAUGHTER AND THE LAW. 87 

the government of actions, and while they cannot in- 
terfere with mere religious belief and opinions they 
may with practices." Can it be seriously contended, 
asked the court, that a civilized nation may not law- 
fully suppress human sacrifices and the Indian custom 
of suttee, because their votaries claim religious sanc- 
tion therefor ; or polygamy for the same reason ? To 
suffer such things, it was answered, " would be to 
make the professed doctrine of religious belief superior 
to the law of the land and in effect to permit every 
citizen to become a law unto himself." Government 
could exist only in name under such circumstances. 
These wise words of the court apply even to honest 
believers, whom we may respect, or, at least, sympa- 
thize with, even in their delusions. But if the defence 
of religion were allowed to the extent that the eccen- 
trics claim, the deadly sin of lying would become 
even more prevalent than it is, and the dangerous 
classes would go over in a body to soi-disant religion. 
There was an English case in 1868, Eeg. v. Wag- 
staffe (10 Cox's Cr. Cas. 530), wherein parents were 
charged with manslaughter of a child because, pur- 
suant to their religion as members of the " Peculiar 
People," they neglected to provide medical attend- 
ance for it, in a case of acute inflammation of the 
lungs ; instead they anointed and prayed over it. 
The court charged that if they had let the child 
starve for want of food, the case would have been 
different; for everyone recognizes the need of food. 
But it was not the same when the question was one 
of medical attendance, for as to that opinions differed, 
and he read to the jury from the general Epistle of 



88 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 

St. James (v. 14, 15) those words upon which the Ro- 
man Church rests the doctrine of extreme unction, 
and the Mormons and " Peculiar People " rest their 
doctrine of healing the sick by anointing and prayer 
only ; words which the learned and sensible commen- 
tator, Adam Clark, forcibly argues to be an exhorta- 
tion by the apostle to use the ordinary Eastern rem- 
edy, oil, as well as prayer, in treating the sick. The 
jury acquitted. Recently in a like case, Reg. v. Sen- 
ior, they disagreed. 1 

Beyond doubt there are very honest, intelligent, 
cultivated persons who believe in the efficacy of Chris- 
tian Science and faith cure. Among some twenty 
cases of death under such treatment, including cases 
of contagious diseases, the writer has noted the names 
of such persons. It is equally true that some " intel- 
ligent persons " find no " fad " too extraordinary for 
adoption. The writer knew of a most shrewd and 
cultivated woman who consulted in Sing Sing prison 
as to investment in stocks an "astrologer" convicted 
not only of illegal medical practice, but of abhorrent 
crime. It is said that where voudooism prevails, cul- 
tivated people consult its priestesses, after the fashion 
of Mcodemus. And when St. John Long, prince of 
quacks, was convicted of manslaughter at the Old 

1 This case seems to have turned upon the Act for prevention of cruelty 
to children [(1894) 57 and 58 Victoria] which makes it misdemeanor 
for one in charge of a child under sixteen years of age willfully to neglect it 
so as to cause death. In imposing sentence Mr. Justice Wills said that he 
did not think the punishment would have any effect upon the prisoner or 
his co-believers, and certainly it would not with regard to the prisoner, 
because it was the second child in respect of whose death he had been 
convicted. 

See Law Times and Law Journal of Dec. 17, 1898, also Law Journal, 
Dec 14, 1898; and Medical Record, Jan. 21, 1899. 



MANSLAUGHTER AND THE LAW. 89 

Bailey (4 Car. and P. 398) among the twenty-nine pa- 
tients who testified to the excellence of his treatment 
were divers " ladies of quality," headed by the Mar- 
chioness of Ormond, than whom, save royalty, only a 
duchess could be better able to form a sound opinion 
in such case. 

But nothing is more false than to say that medical 
laws forbid the practice of Christian Science, faith 
cure, voudoo, vitapathy, or any other " pathy " or 
cult. Those laws provide only, at most, that no per- 
son shall practice medicine who has not pursued a 
course in medical study. There is nothing in them to 
prevent any licentiate from practicing as he pleases. 
There is nothing to prevent a masseur without license 
from washing and rubbing a man, if he confines him- 
self to that. But there is no reason why unqualified 
persons should be allowed to pretend to cure disease, 
by their pretences deprive the sick of the benefits of 
science, and yet escape the just consequences of their 
imposture. The whole case of these people who de- 
sire to earn a livelihood by treating the sick without 
any adequate preparation therefor through study and 
investigation was summed up in the grotesque false- 
hood, circulated by way of petition to the New York 
Legislature of 1885 for the repeal of the medical law, 
which said : 

"The law deprives from practicing in this State 
persons who are gifted with the power of healing by 
the laying of hands, through the presence and impart- 
ing of vital magnetic force, and otherwise. Some of 
these powers are natural to the practitioner and can- 
not be imparted by the course of study required by 



90 CHEISTIAN SCIENCE. 

medical colleges." Could anything be more absurd? 
The natural power to heal disease impaired by the 
acquisition of knowledge concerning disease ! And 
yet there were those prepared to believe even that, so 
true is it to-day, as of old, that the wonderful is the 
unknown and the credible that which is impossible of 
belief. 

It may be a question of policy whether Christian 
Scientists should be prosecuted ; whether cheap mar- 
tyrdom might not strengthen them. But there seems 
no good reason, as matter of law, why they should 
not be punished for the evil they actually do, prohib- 
ited, if the policy seem wise, from treating the sick 
without adequate preparation by study of medical 
science, and convicted of manslaughter if death re- 
sults from interference. 



IV 

CHKISTIAN SCIENCE BEFOEE THE LAW 1 

About a hundred years ago at the close of the 
eighteenth century, when as now men were proud and 
boastful of their enlightened times, when from mis- 
rule and free thought, the Age of Eeason and the red 
harvest of Dr. Guillotin were about to come into 
being, a man passed through Europe, captivating the 
fancy of the great Catherine and the small Louis, the 
reason of courtiers, the adoration of the mob. Read- 
ing of Cagliostro, the mountebank, bedizened like a 
stage wizard, wonderfully curing the sick, revealing 
the past, foretelling the future and protected by royal 
power from the prosecutions that the faculty and men 
learned in the science of the day were eager to direct 
against him, we are disposed from the height of our 
greater attainments to smile at what we consider the 
gullibility of the last fin de siecle. But charlatan, im- 
postor and robber as he was, the vogue of Cagliostro, 
or Balsamo, is understandable. Beside his natural 
shrewdness he had, at least, the education that comes 
to the observant from travel and association with the 
intelligent, and seems to have possessed as well, a share 
of the medical learning of the time. Not only were 
his cures gratuitous s^ve when the rich rewarded him 

1 Read by request of the Medical Society of this County of Westchester, 
New York, at its annual meeting September 19th, 1899. 

91 



92 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 

richly, but he distributed largesse among the crowd 
with lavish hand. Presumptuous as his assumption 
of superhuman knowledge and skill was, it was still 
only the claim of the astrologer, the pretended adept 
in Eastern lore, the master of Masonic mysteries. 
He did not assume to be in the secret councils of the 
most High, to supplement the work of Christ or to 
found a religious cult. At the end of our wonder- 
ful century of material progress that has covered the 
world with iron roads for the steam monster and al- 
ready harnessed his swifter successor, the lightning ; 
that has enabled us to speak in a moment with the 
antipodes and in medicine and surgery has wrought 
wonders undreamed of in Cagliostro's day, lengthen- 
ing the average span of life, dispelling pain from the 
chamber where the knife works calmly, in vital re- 
gions, undisturbed by the patient's agony, finding with 
microscopic eye the causes of sickness, banishing, with 
antiseptic magic, putrifying germs that so lately de- 
feated the surgeon's skill, and checking once dreaded 
plagues by wise sanitation; — at the end of this cen- 
tury of ours, surpassing all others in the progress of 
medical science and art, we have a more puzzling 
phenomenon. A sickly New England woman, twice 
widowed, once divorced and so without the vestal 
sanctity usually claimed by those of her sex who as- 
pire to lead religious thought, untravelled, unlearned, 
and uncultivated, even in the use of the mother tongue, 
has been able to impose upon many persons at home 
and abroad, not only a flatulent, incoherent theory of 
religion and metaphysics, which, as religion and meta- 
physics, would concern us little, but also a system of 



CHRISTIAN SCIENCE BEFORE THE LAW. 93 

treating, or rather neglecting, the sick, that, founded 
upon bold denial of obvious facts, and of conclusions, 
harvested by the wise and learned from ages of obser- 
vation, fattens the greedy coffers of herself and her 
disciples, who follow it as a business, while leading 
down to dusty death many credulous adults and de- 
fenceless children. What is especially hard to under- 
stand is that among Mrs. Eddy's honest followers are 
persons of literary cultivation, who, we should sup- 
pose, might guage at once her ignorance and preten- 
tiousness by the ungrammatical ill-rhymed doggerel 
which she puts forth as poetry ; men of the law who, 
presumably, should be able to detect the contradiction 
and lack of logical coherence in her soi-disant system ; 
pious and refined souls, whom we would expect to find 
disgusted with the blasphemy and vulgarity of much 
that she has written. Pilgrimages are made to her 
Concord home. Churches are built in which her book 
of ineffable nonsense is solemnly read and her jargon, 
interpolated into the Lord's prayer, is recited. Men 
of judicial position have introduced her apostles to 
large audiences, and legislators seriously inclined to 
their tales of wonder. But although her followers 
are many, being estimated by her disciples between 
the rather wide limits of 60,000 and 600,000, it is 
comforting to reflect that those not under her spell 
are numbered by the millions. And although any 
delusion that controls the minds and actions of a con- 
siderable part of the community to its possible detri- 
ment is a proper subject for careful examination, we 
should not fall into the error of giving factitious im- 
portance to what is intrinsically ridiculous, by over- 



94 CHEISTIAN SCIENCE. 

serious treatment of it. Examples of this mistaken 
course are not far to seek. It is probably true that if 
the ultra metaphysical theories of Hahneman, which 
Mrs. Eddy accepted before launching her own non- 
sense, had been consistently laughed at, homeopathy 
as a system would not now exist. How many intel- 
ligent homeopathists of our day believe in the efficacy 
of the thirtieth, — not to mention the 200th — potency 
of even the powerful drugs, leaving out of considera- 
tion the inert substances that Hahnemanites have 
proposed as curatives, dilutions expressed in figures 
that the human mind is incapable of grasping ? Who 
now believes that the power of these infinite dilutions 
can be increased or diminished by the number and 
direction of the shakes given to the vial containing 
them ? In thus suggesting that strict Hahnemanism 
is a delusion of the past, I but echo gentlemen of the 
homeopathic school for whose ability and skill I have 
great respect. Turn to the files of New York City 
journals 1 when some years ago the homeopathic pro- 
fession in that city was agitated over the ever vital 
question of patronage, and you will find one of its 
leaders, if not the leader, reported as saying, that 
since Dr. Bayard's death there had not been one 
practitioner of true Hahnemanism in that great city ; 
while his opponent, at the head of the professedly 
strict sect when taunted with the use in his practice 
of morphine, antipyrine, quinine and like drugs in 
large doses, retorted that he used them only as pal- 
liatives, not as curatives, as forerunners of the homeo- 

1 See New York Times, Sun, World, Dec. 12; Dec. 13, 20, 1889; Jan. 
io, 14; Feb. 23; Herald, Feb. 24, 1890, and about those dates. 



CHRISTIAN" SCIENCE BEFORE THE LAW. 95 

pathic remedies by which alone he effected his cures. 
Again when in 1887 it was my duty to urge before 
the New York Legislature the medical act of that 
year, the passage of which it is but just to say was 
largely aided by the hearty cooperation of the Homeo- 
pathic Society, one gentleman of that body whose 
friendship and confidence it was my pleasure and 
privilege to gain, said to me, if you people, — mean- 
ing the regular school I represented, — had good sense, 
you could destroy us. If you would only establish 
chairs in your colleges to teach what homeopathy is, 
or even do what was lately done at Harvard, let 
students formulate questions to be answered by a 
homeopath, there would be no place for our colleges ; 
but until you admit that we have done something for 
medicine, and so long as you denounce us, we will 
oppose you. 

These things need to be said because they bear upon 
the policy of legislation ; but this is neither the time 
nor the place to discuss that thesis from its strictly med- 
ical standpoint ; nor am I the person to espouse either 
side of such a discussion ; and certainly neither you 
nor I are here to deal intemperately or flippantly with 
any honest belief or to belittle what good may lie in 
any theory or system, even Christian science, — how- 
ever nonsensical some of its tenets may seem to us, — 
nor yet to be so foolish or discourteous as to deny the 
general intelligence and mental vigor of any one 
merely because he may accept some proposition that 
to us seems bizarre and fantastic. Had I the honor 
and privilege of being a physician — as fortunately for 
my possible patients, perhaps, I have not, — it seems to 



96 CHEISTIAN SCIENCE. 

me that, so far as time and occasion served, I should 
examine carefully every new thing that promised well 
for poor humanity and be patient and long-suffering 
with even the erratic thinker, if satisfied that he was 
honestly striving to benefit his fellow-man, and not 
merely to fill his purse by obtruding recklessly, and 
with conscious ignorance, where only the learned 
should be allowed. That I apprehend to be the stand- 
point of the true physician, who above other men per- 
haps, should prove all things, and hold fast that which 
is true. 

jSTow some of you may be thinking what has all this 
to do with Christian science before the law ? The an- 
swer is simple : in discussing actual law, or proposed 
legislation it must be borne in mind that the aims of 
the law are above all things practical. It has no 
function to operate upon folly as folly ; and, pro- 
verbially, it does not concern itself with trifles. It is 
necessarily tolerant of widely divergent ideas and of 
much that to many seems wrong. Religious beliefs, 
in so far as they are merely beliefs not reduced to 
criminal or dangerous practices, are not proper objects 
of its control, — at least not in our country. We are 
free, with a constitutional right of freedom, to work 
out our own salvation without legislative aid. Over- 
legislation to which, of late, there is an unfortunate 
tendency, is itself, in our theory of government, a dis- 
tinct evil, a disease of the body politic. Legislative 
regulation of the minor actions of men, their beliefs, 
their merely ethical conduct is intolerable. To legis- 
late for the benefit of any scientific theory to the det- 
riment of another would be, save perhaps in very 



CHRISTIAN SCIENCE BEFORE THE LAW. 97 

exceptional circumstances, a great wrong, unwise and 
most harmful to the cause of true science and the ad- 
vancement of human knowledge. A statute for ex- 
ample ordaining that no person should worship except 
according to the Roman Catholic or Presbyterian 
scheme, or treat the sick except secumdum artem, 
whether by regular homeopathic or any other rule, 
would be an abomination, unwise and, God be thanked, 
unconstitutional. 

Because no well informed person disputes these 
truisms, charlatanism, religious and medical, seeks to 
make of them its refuge and strong bulwark. The 
Mormon for his polygamy, the Oneida Communist for 
his promiscuity, the Christian Scientist for his slaughter 
of credulous adults and helpless babes, alike claims 
protection from the law upon a theory that the free 
right to worship according to conscience implies the 
right to commit any act under the pretext of religion 
which an evil or erratic mind may inspire. The osteo- 
path, the venopath, the vitapath, the Kickapoo In- 
dians and all the rabble of ignorant quacks, in like 
fashion, seek exemption of their impostures from legal 
regulation in the contention, that because the last 
word has not been uttered in medical science, it is 
therefore class legislation to enact any law prohibiting 
the ignorant to assume, as a business, the entire charge 
and cure, of the sick. At first blush this superficial 
argument is plausible and influences many. When 
^Esop's ass masqueraded under the lion's skin, all the 
other animals, intelligent man included, stood for 
awhile in awe of him; but when his tuneful note vi- 
brated on the air, they tore off his disguise, and dis- 



98 CHKISTIAIS' SCIENCE. 

closed him once more an obvious ass. In the long 
run the disguise must fall from pseudo — religious and 
medical imposture. Christian Science will not be an 
exception to the rule. Its mask of religion is very 
thin but the animal below it is rather the cunning 
fox than the honest useful ass. In tearing off its dis- 
guise the law may play a part ; but the unmasking 
will best be done by turning on the light and showing 
what an amusing misfit the garb of religion is, and 
what a greedy unscrupulous fox it covers. 

The questions then present themselves whether Chris- 
tian Science is such a phase of genuine religious belief, 
or so trifling in its evil results that its daily practices 
should be unrestrained by law ; and if not, whether 
the present condition of the law is adequate to deal 
with those practices or whether further legislation is 
necessary. 

Others as well as myself, have dealt so fully else- 
where with this delusion that these questions may be 
here answered in general terms without citation of 
specific authority. We may consider general princi- 
ples rather than particular cases. 

That many intelligent persons accept Mrs. Eddy's 
lucubrations as a religious and therapeutic system, has 
been already admitted to be a puzzling fact, its most 
probable explanation being that such persons accept 
as true, without investigation, all the marvellous tales 
of the Eddyites or generalize from particular cases 
known to themselves without reading the farrago of 
nonsense constituting the so-called system, and with- 
out time or inclination, even if they have ability, to 
investigate in true scientific spirit the causes of what 



CHEISTIAIST SCIENCE BEFORE THE LAW. 99 

arouses their astonishment. Having examined with 
care her fundamental books, I am at a loss to know 
what she has contributed to religious thought, meta- 
physical speculation or therapeutical knowledge, or yet 
what she says that is new. Even her doctrine that 
cleanliness and hygienic life are detrimental, has long 
been acted upon by the dirty fakirs of the Orient, and 
the great unwashed of Christendom. Her magnum- 
opus " Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," 
that costly and most lucrative text- book of innumera- 
ble editions, pretends, as its name indicates, to be 
founded upon and to interpret the Bible, but not to be 
a new evangel. Mrs. Eddy's modest pretence is that 
while the Bible is God's word, its, and therefore his, 
meaning, utterly escaped the apprehension both of the 
simple, and the learned, during the long ages, only to 
be revealed to her in the year of grace, 1866. Pre- 
sumably it is the version of King James that she in- 
terprets, for she knows no Hebrew, 1 no Greek, no 
Latin and precious little English. She is not in the 
babe or suckling class, from which, we are told, wis- 
dom sometimes emanates to confound the wise, but is 
said to be a mature dame of about eighty, having 
nearly completed her first half century when it pleased 
God, in his mysterious providence, to vouchsafe to her 
that key to his meaning which he had theretofore 
denied to saints and scholars. As nearly as one can 
spell it out, this key, which, for purposes of lucre, Mrs. 
Eddy has copyrighted, is the stale theory, as old as 
philosophic speculation, familiar to Sophomores but 
new to her, that everything is mind. Her corollary 

1 Her brother Albert however studied Hebrew in vacations. See p. 42. 



O 



100 CHEISTIAIST SCIENCE. 

is that health is right thought, and disease, sickness 
and every other evil only wrong thought. Upon this 
theme, she rings her changes ; and it is safe to say, 
that had she confined herself to this peculiar exposi- 
tion of Scripture, her congregations would have been 
small, and she would have remained an obscure eccen- 
tric New England woman, confessedly feeble in health 
and poor in pocket. Her trifling interpretation of 
Scripture would no more have been suggested as mat- 
ter for legal control, than the wit and satire of Colonel 
Ingersoll or the broad learning of Dr. Briggs. Her 
religious views would concern us no more than those 
of the forgotten Matthias, John of Leyden, or Noyes, 
and far less than the still somewhat prevalent doc- 
trines of Joseph Smith and Brigham Young. 

But it seems that feeble health led the lady to 
dabble in medical theories, to accept at one time the 
views of Hahneman and later the doctrine of animal 
magnetism as expounded by one P. P. Quimby, whose 
patient she was in his life, whose memory after death 
she apparently execrates with all the hate of a jealous, 
envious, covetous woman. It seems too, that in a 
small way, she practiced homeopathy until becoming 
convinced that there was no medicinal virtue in its 
high potencies, and finding that their administration 
was followed, nevertheless, by cures, she arrived at 
her great discovery that health is Mind in capitals, 
and disease, mortal mind in small letters ; for not the 
least amusing part of her book is its use of different 
fonts of type to differentiate Truth from error, 
Health, or Ease, from Dis-ease ; a play of words that 
appeals strongly to her. Here, of course, is the grain 



CHRISTIAN SCIENCE BEFORE THE LAW. 101 

of truth in her system. Perceiving that suggestion 
plays an important part in the cure of certain dis- 
eases, being probably ignorant or possibly advised 
that this was no new thing, and, generalizing from 
the particular as the rash, the ignorant and the im- 
postor all do, she concluded and announced that be- 
cause striking cures often follow an access of faith or 
other strong mental excitation, therefore all diseases 
and bodily injuries are merely false beliefs to be 
treated by mental processes, and that all drugs, ma- 
terial remedies and even hygienic measures are not 
only ineffectual, but harmful. Her system of thera- 
peutics, then, amounts to this : disease, sickness, bodily 
injury of any kind do not exist except as mistaken be- 
liefs to be removed by argument with them, which 
argument is to be addressed to the disease silently, 
lest, haply, the patient overhearing the discussion be 
confirmed in his error. Diagnosis, as physicians and 
ordinary laymen understand the term, does not exist 
in her scheme. Under this principle it is quite unnec- 
essary for the healer to come in contact with the pa- 
tient. The one may be in Hong Kong, the other in 
Terra del Fuego. The effect will be just as great as 
if they were in conjunction. Now while as a theory, 
this arrant nonsense is merely comical, a moment's re- 
flection shows that its practice is obviously dangerous 
in a high degree, not only to the particular victim but 
to the community at large. That its promulgator is 
either dishonest in advancing it or doubtful of its full 
efficacy, seems apparent from her advice to disciples 
to u leave the adjustment of broken bones and dislo- 
cations to the fingers of surgeons," "until the ad- 



102 CHKISTIAN SCIENCE. 

vancing age admits the efficacy and supremacy of 
Mind," a precept that suggests her conviction of the 
truth of what worthy Quarles quaintly said : " Phy- 
sicians of all men, are most happy ; whatever good 
success soever, they have, the world proclaimeth ; and 
what faults they commit, the earth covereth." Is not 
this advice of hers the cunning of the fox rather than 
a delusion of the other animal ? Is it not manifestly 
a warning that while it is comparatively safe for her 
ignorant followers to treat the sick for rich reward, 
under the guise of religious aid, in cases of ordinary 
ailments, yet surgery is to be shunned by them, only 
because in that department of medicine malpractice 
is more demonstrable to a lay jury than in physic, 
where the healing force of nature may be relied upon 
to give the Christianly scientific practitioner success 
in many cases, while his failures are more likely to 
escape detection. 

It would seem to be perfectly clear from this sum- 
mary of her doctrine — which is I believe and certainly 
hope, entirely fair, and not travesty — travesty indeed, 
being impossible — that while from the standpoint of 
religion and philosophy, Mrs. Eddy's so-called science 
is beneath contempt, a banality with which the law 
should not concern itself ; it is on the other hand 
from the standpoint of the public health, a serious mat- 
ter, since it puts in peril not only credulous adults 
and their innocent children, but in cases of contagious 
and infectious diseases, great numbers of persons who 
repudiate its nonsense, thus menacing the whole com- 
munity. Let us concede, for argument sake, what the 
Eddyites vehemently declare, that if it man.be willing 



CHRISTIAN SCIEKCE BEFOKE THE LAW. 103 

to subject himself to the treatment of Christian 
Science for any sickness, even smallpox, he should be 
allowed to do so ; are we also to concede that he 
should be allowed to subject his infant children af- 
flicted with that malady or scarlet fever, or malignant 
diphtheria to the same and no other treatment ? Is 
he to be suffered to sacrifice his own offspring and 
also spread contagion? Common sense affords the 
answer. 

What is dangerous and pestilential in Christian 
Science is its absolute denial in specific terms that dis- 
ease or bodily injury exists except as a perverted 
phase of thought ; its denial that any material remedy 
appliances or hygienic measures are of any use in the 
treatment of the sick, and its positive assertion that 
the whole materia medica is harmful. A consistent 
Christian Scientist must logically be opposed to vacci- 
nation, to antiseptic methods, to bandages, to cauter- 
ies, to prophylactics, to anesthetics — in short, to every 
approved method of relieving pain, curing the sick 
and protecting the public from contagion or infection. 
Let us concede to the power of suggestion all that is 
established and far more. Let us admit for the argu- 
ment's sake, if not in fact, that even cancer may be 
cured, by convincing the patient that there is no such 
disease and that he is not afflicted with it ; still we 
are not up with Mrs. Eddy. For that astounding 
person distinctly says that the healer must not name 
the disease, but must argue with it mentally ; that her 
methods are as efficacious for infants, in whose minds 
such suggestion cannot be planted, as for adults ; that 
oceans may roll between healer and patient cutting 



104 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 

off communication and therefore suggestion by any 
means that human science as yet admits to be pos- 
sible. Thus she seems to eliminate from her theory 
the only grain of truth we have found in it and deny 
the very cause that produces what results follow its 
application in the restoration of the sick to the 
normal. 

I cannot better illustrate in passing the disingenu- 
ousness of the professional healer, the hyper sensitive- 
ness of the healed and the difficulties in the way , of 
investigating reported marvellous cures than by two 
examples in my recent experience. Mr. Carol Norton 
is one of the Board of Lecturers of the First Church 
of Christ Scientist, "the mother church" so-called. 
He delivers with some variations, a copyrighted 
lecture, offering to give medical proof of the cure of 
cancer, locomotor ataxia and other obstinate maladies. 
I wrote some time ago for such proofs and also asked 
specifically if Mr. Norton himself would venture to 
substitute Christian Science for medical aid in the case 
of a fractured skull, a severed artery or confluent 
smallpox. After some correspondence he produced 
so-called medical proof, consisting of brief statements 
of conclusion, signed by Christian Scientists but of 
little or no evidential value from either a medical or 
legal standpoint ; not differing in kind from the cer- 
tificates with which nostrum venders have made us 
familiar. To my questions he replied that he " pre- 
ferred to shelve them." Having written an account 
of this effort at investigation to the New York Sun, 1 
a gentleman wrote in reference to it, asking if I had 

1 See these letters in the appendix, pps. 165-182; also pps. 64, 65, 113. 



CHRISTIAN SCIENCE BEFORE THE LAW. 105 

seriously examined Christian Science and saying, in 
perfectly good faith, as I believe, that while he was 
ignorant of its methods, he felt bound to testify to its 
marvellous results in his own family upon a patient 
" turned out to die " by a great hospital, and given up 
by three physicians, whom he named, two being well- 
known and one eminent. He expressed a desire to 
put the facts before me. I replied courteously, as I 
thought, expressing entire readiness to believe in the 
existence of the disease and its cure, under the treat- 
ment of Christian Science, but saying with perfect 
frankness, inasmuch as my correspondent professed 
ignorance of that cult's methods, that I should be dis- 
posed to explain the cure by suggestion and not by 
the theories of Mrs. Eddy, which it seemed to me im- 
possible for a sane mind to accept ; and I also asked 
that he would let me know all the facts. This gentle- 
man was, I regret to say, so offended at my unfortu- 
nate remark, that it did not seem to me any sane mind 
could accept those theories of which he professed 
to be ignorant, that he did not give me the informa- 
tion which he had volunteered. And it appeared that 
of the physicians he named, the eminent specialist had 
been consulted only once and then had incurred odium 
by charging an office fee of $10, while the other more 
prominent physician told me that he knew of no such 
person as the patient, although his brother might per- 
haps have a patient of that name ; to my further in- 
quiries I have had no answer. 1 

1 Since this paper was read I have had accurate information from the 
attending physicians showing my correspondent to have been absolutely 
misinformed in the premises, however honest in belief. 



106 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 

We are now at a point where we may consider 
whether the law, as it is, can deal adequately with the 
practices of Eddyism or whether further legislation is 
desirable in the premises. 

We have a statute in this state making it a misde- 
meanor for any one not a licensed physician to prac- 
tice medicine. There are also requirements as to re- 
porting contagious diseases, deaths, etc., with all of 
which you are familiar. Under the medical law, the 
only puzzling question is, in a given case, whether the 
acts proved constitute practice of medicine. A clever 
saying I have had occasion to quote before, in this 
connection is, that it is one thing to renounce the 
devil and all his works, and a very different and more 
difficult matter to recognize the devil and his works 
when you encounter them. No effort has been made, 
so far as I know to punish in our state's courts the 
practice of Christian Science as an offence under the 
Public Health Law, which contains no definition of 
medical practice as do the statutes of some other 
states. It is true that the daily press reported re- 
cently the conviction of a Christian Scientist in 
Brooklyn. The defendant in that case, however, was 
not an Eddyite but some other species of divine or 
mental healer, and moreover, had administered ma- 
terial remedies, upon which fact a conviction was pro- 
cured. 1 On the other hand in a civil case, Smith v. 
Lane, our Supreme Court held, some years ago, that a 
masseur was not a practitioner of medicine and made 
the test of such practice to consist in the prescription 

1 This was the case in which the photograph forming the frontispiece 
was taken. See preface. About the time this paper was read a similar 
case decided in like manner was reported in Chicago. — People v. Bratseh, 
Chic. Law Journal, Sept. 15, 1899, Vol. IV., N. O. 397. 



CHRISTIAN SCIENCE BEFORE THE LAW. 107 

or administration of drugs or remedies or the use of 
instruments. This is manifestly an imperfect defini- 
tion ; and it would have been better perhaps, had the 
court confined itself to deciding that the facts proven 
in the particular case, did not constitute such practice, 
without essaying to make a general definition, which 
is a more difficult task than on its face it appears to 
be. In the matter of business fraud courts have been 
wiser and contented themselves in each case with de- 
ciding whether the proven facts constitute a fraud, 
avoiding a general definition of fraud itself ; with full 
knowledge that to define that protean malfeasance 
would only make easy the way of the transgressor. 
So, then, although the point has not been specifically 
decided in a criminal action under the medical law it 
is probable that in such a prosecution our courts would 
hold that the attempt to treat the sick by mental or 
pseudo-religious methods alone does not constitute the 
practice of medicine. In Rhode Island and Ohio, the 
case of Smith v. Lane has been followed. In Ne- 
braska and Illinois, it has been repudiated as incon- 
sistent with the statutes of those states, but under the 
new medical law of Illinois, it would seem that Chris- 
tian Scientists have been influential enough to secure 
exemption for their business. 

We may assert then, that Eddy ism is not punishable 
under the medical law of this state unless the defini- 
tion of Smith v. Lane shall be repudiated. 

So far as the reporting of contagious diseases, in- 
flamed eyes of babies, births and deaths by medical 
attendants in charge, the law is as you know substan- 
tially as follows : 



108 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 

There are first the general laws authorizing the 
creation of local boards of health with certain 
powers, among them that of making and enforcing 
proper ordinances, and providing a penalty for dis- 
obedience. 

§ 397 of the Penal Code provides that a fine not 
exceeding $2,000 or imprisonment not exceeding one 
year or both may be inflicted upon any one violating 
a provision of the health law not otherwise punished, 
or violating or refusing or omitting to obey, a lawful 
order or regulation of such a board. 

§ 288 of that code provides for the reporting of 
inflamed eyes of an infant within the age of two 
weeks by the medical attendant, midwife or person 
having the child in charge. It also requires a person 
having by law the duty of furnishing medical at- 
tention to a child, so to do under the penalty of mis- 
demeanor. 

§ 1172 of the Greater New York charter authorizes 
the Board of Health to make ordinances, violation of 
which shall be a misdemeanor. 

§§ 145 to 158 of the New York City Sanitary Code, 
and I presume of other codes, provide for reports of 
contagious diseases by physicians, lodging housekeep- 
ers, masters of vessels, undertakers and others, and 
§ 5 defines the term Physician to include " dentists and 
every other person who practices about the cure of 
the sick or injured, or who has the charge of, or pro- 
fessionally prescribes for any person sick, injured or 
diseased and any person who pursues the business of 
or acts as a midwife ; " a definition as you see very 
different from and much wider than that of Smith v. 



CHRISTIAN SCIENCE BEFOKE THE LAW. 109 

Lane, and quite broad enough to include Christian 
Scientists. 

We may now consider first what, if any, is the civil 
liability of Christian Scientists for injuries resulting 
from their ignorance and lack of skill, to their pa- 
tients. Second, is a Christian Scientist guilty of man- 
slaughter or murder in case his patient dies, as a result 
of his neglect to use, or his prevention of, means that 
demonstrably would have saved life ? 

The rule of law is well established, that one who 
with culpable ignorance or recklessness, undertakes a 
duty requiring for its proper performance, special 
knowledge, skill or care, is answerable for the ill 
effects of his malfeasance. In the law of bailments 
the degree of care required of the bailee has been 
said to depend in some measure upon the compensa- 
tion. Thus if A give to B, a warehouse man, valu- 
ables for storage and pay therefor, more care is re- 
quired of A than where B gives the goods to a friend 
to be cared for gratuitously, — although even in the 
latter case, the friend would not be absolved from all 
care. It has been often sought to apply this doctrine 
in cases of medical malpractice, the argument being 
made that one who undertakes the cure of the sick 
without fee should be held to a less degree of skill and 
care than where compensation is given or promised. 
But against this view the courts have set their faces ; 
rightly holding to be barbarous the doctrine that a 
medical man may be careless with the afflicted poor 
but must be careful with the rich ; and although the 
laws of some states only forbid unlicensed medical 
practice in cases where fees are taken, still the re- 



110 CHRISTIAN SCIEKCE. 

ceipt of fee is not an essential element of such practice, 
as a rule, and does not affect the liability for mal- 
practice. It has been said also, that although the rule 
is, that a physician's duty to his patient implies the 
possession by the former of at least the average 
knowledge and skill of his profession, — regard being 
had to the state of medical science, — and the applica- 
tion by him of that skill and knowledge with at least 
the ordinary and usual care of his fellow-practitioners, 
still where one professes to follow a certain school or 
system of medicine, he is to be held to its standards 
and not to those of another school; that a homeopath, 
for instance, is to be judged by the standards of his 
own system. The ancient judgment of the Cadi, 
cited by Puff dendorf , is ordinarily given as an illustra- 
tion of this point. A man having demanded damages 
of a veterinary for blinding him with an ointment 
used on the eyes of horses, the Cadi found for de- 
fendant saying that if plaintiff had not been an ass, he 
would not have gone to a horse doctor. This was 
very much the line of thought taken by the court in 
Smith v. Lane above alluded to as defining medical 
practice in this state. It there appeared that the de- 
fendant Lane had contracted for the services of Smith, 
a rubber and manipulator, induced by the latter's pre- 
tension that his treatment relieved the ills of life 
marvellously, and almost robbed death of its terrors. 
After taking the treatment, Lane refused to pay the 
agreed price and Smith brought his action to recover 
it. Our General Term held that the masseur was en- 
titled to his pay, even though his pretences were pre- 
posterous, since the patient had received the treat- 



CHRISTIAN SCIENCE BEFORE THE LAW. Ill 

ment he bargained for, while the fact that he was fool 
enough to believe the plaintiff's vain boasting was no 
defence, and not the court's affair. 1 The law merchant 
recognizes a seller's right to praise his wares and to 
utter any opinion of them, no matter how extravagant, 
provided he does not mislead the purchaser of average 
intelligence, by false statements or fraudulent conceal- 
ment of facts as contrasted with conclusions. If he 
has a broken down old horse for sale, the defects of 
which are patent to any man of horse sense, he may 
praise the brute to the skies as a beautiful creature. 
And, in like manner, the law does not prohibit that 
self -laudation known in medicine as quacking, which 
may be unethical, but is not illegal. It is to be noted 
however, that, in Smith's case, there was no conten- 
tion that the patient had suffered from the treat- 
ment any injury, damages for which he might have 
offset against the bill ; and it might well be that a 
Christian Scientist, although allowed to collect fees 
under the doctrine of that case, might still be held 
liable for injury resulting from his recklessness in 
undertaking a duty without skill or knowledge to per- 
form it. 

It is, however, with the criminal or penal, not the 
civil side of the law, that we are here concerned : and 
in this domain of the law, the Cadi's judgment is 
without authority ; for if a veterinary should assume 
recklessly to prescribe an equine dose of cathartic for 
a man, as in the merry tale we all have heard, it would 
not be a defence in a criminal prosecution growing 
out of the patient's death that the latter had assented 

1 See pages 79 and 80 for a further statement of the Court's opinion. ~ 



112 CHKISTIAN SCIENCE. 

to the treatment. In eases of manslaughter it is the 
state, not the individual, that is offended against ; and 
it is not to be presumed, even in the absence of specific 
legislation, that the state assents to the taking of life 
by gross recklessness or ignorance. In our own state 
an attempt at suicide is felony. To aid or abet the 
attempt is also felony, and to aid, abet, advise or en- 
courage the suicide is manslaughter in the first degree 
under the penal code, and has been held to be murder. 
If A says to B, " I will give you $50 to kill me," and B 
obligingly does so, the latter's felonious act is not the 
less murder because of A's request or his payment of 
the fee. And so if A is fool enough to submit to reck- 
less and ignorant practice for the cure of his actual 
or imagined maladies, his assent should not absolve an 
ignorant or reckless practitioner from criminal liability 
for the fatal result of his malpractice. Even if the rule 
be sound that each practitioner is to be judged by the 
system he professes, it should be at least established 
that he follows a system based upon, or at least not 
contrary to, ordinary observation and experience. He 
cannot call his whims and vagaries a system. Ac- 
cordingly in Massachusetts not long ago, when there 
was no medical law in that state, a quack was held by 
the Supreme Court, in a carefully reasoned opinion by 
Mr. Justice Holmes, now its Chief Justice, to have 
been properly convicted of manslaughter for causing 
the death of a woman by keeping her swathed in 
flannels, saturated with kerosene; and that learned 
court, — repudiating as unsound, or ill-reported, the 
earlier Massachusetts case, acquitting Thomson, 
founder of the Botanic or Thomsonian School, a case 



CHRISTIAN SCIENCE BEFORE THE LAW. 113 

extensively followed in other states, — intimated that 
the kerosene practitioner might have been properly 
convicted of murder. 1 

In a case occurring in your own county, last 
spring, the Grand Jury refused to indict, as I under- 
stand, because, upon the evidence before it, the ac- 
cused was not shown to have done more than render 
the religious offices of the cult to the deceased, the 
former testifying in her own behalf, that she received 
no fee, did not assume care of the case, medically, and 
had even suggested to the deceased, the propriety of 
calling in medical aid. While tried by the ordinary 
teaching and customs of the Christian Scientists, — 
who do assume full charge of such cases, and not only 
receive fees but teach that the patient gets well quicker 
if he pays a fat one, — this statement of the accused 
lacked veri-similitude, yet, if believed, it of course, ex- 
culpated her. But, in the hypothetical case put to 
Mr. Carol Norton, as to which he refused to commit 
himself, there can be no doubt that a Christian Scien- 
tist would be guilty of manslaughter if not murder. I 
said to that gentleman, if a lad should accidentally 
sever an artery and surgical aid were accessible, would 
you presume to set that aid aside, and essay to staunch 
the gush of arterial blood by your mental processes 
alone? The question presented a dilemma; to say 
that he would not do so, implied lack of faith in the 
doctrine he teaches and practices for a livelihood ; to 
admit that he would do so, would confess willingness 
to commit felony. Is it any wonder that he preferred 
" to shelve " the question ? 

1 See contents for paper on Manslaughter, pp. 73 to 77. 



114 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 

On this point, then, we may feel assured that the 
malpractice of a Christian Scientist resulting in death 
would be a criminal offence under the law, and a ver- 
dict by a jury finding one guilty thereof, would be up- 
held; by malpractice I mean the substitution with 
gross recklessness or ignorance, or both, of mental proc- 
esses obviously inefficacious, for medical or surgical 
processes demonstrably efficacious, resulting in the 
death of the patient. 

It remains to consider the desirability of further 
legislation in the premises. 

Personally, as already indicated, I am not and 
never have been a zealous advocate of too much legis- 
lation. Our statute book has already upon it many 
laws that might be judiciously obliterated. A statute 
to be effective should be enforceable, and enforced 
with moderation, with wisdom, and without any sus- 
picion of oppression, gain, or blackmail, upon the part 
of those charged with its administration. It is safe to 
say that the medical laws have been so enforced, oth- 
erwise there would be a strong popular movement for 
their repeal, such as has arisen and been successfully 
carried out heretofore. There is no use in shutting 
one's eye to facts. Many of the laws that are gotten 
through ostensibly for the public welfare, are really 
for the private good of individuals or organizations, 
and they are intrinsically selfish rather than public 
spirited. Medical legislation is in a sense, — a very 
limited sense, — inderogation of the right of every man 
to employ his knowledge and talents in winning his 
bread freely ; obviously, therefore, there is a point be- 
yond which it cannot go, and that. point. is, the limit 



CHRISTIAN SCIENCE BEFORE THE LAW. 115 

of what is necessary to protect the public health and 
individual citizens against the evil effects of ignorance 
and unskilfulness in the performance of a duty re- 
quiring knowledge and skill of the highest standard. 
To say that no one should practice Christian Science 
or any other method of curing the sick, would not be 
desirable, politic, or just. To require, as has been sug- 
gested, that all sick men should call in physicians, is 
too absurd a proposition for serious consideration. 
The utmost that can be properly enacted as law is that 
no one shall be allowed to engage in the business of 
healing the sick and the injured, except those who 
have procured licenses by demonstrating that they are 
possessed of a fair knowledge of those branches of 
general and special knowledge which the general opin- 
ion of mankind agrees are requisite to fit them for the 
proper discharge of the duty which they seek to assume. 
All men whose opinions are worthy of consideration, 
agree that to fit one to deal with human infirmities, a 
course of study in, and knowledge of, certain branches 
of science is necessary. One should know something 
of anatomy, of physiology, of diet, of the action of 
drugs and poisons, of remedies and antidotes, of the 
mechanism of labor, — in short, of what is generally 
known as medical science. By demonstrating such 
knowledge he procures his license. He is not called 
upon, and should not be called upon, to follow any 
cut and dried system, but should be left to the exer- 
cise of his judgment, being responsible to his patient, 
and also to the community, for his abuse of that judg- 
ment. He would be a very foolish man who did not 
vary his treatment in different cases, who did not seek 



116 CHKISTIAJST SCIENCE. 

to widen his knowledge, who would belittle the great 
force of suggestion, or refuse to save his patient by 
some method that was not strictly secundum artem. 
A person so licensed might practice Christian Science 
regularly if he saw fit to do so, but, if I may be par- 
doned borrowing the language of our sporting friends, 
the odds are heavy, that he would not do so. This 
then is the sum of the whole matter. The state has a 
perfect right to require of persons practicing medi- 
cine, essaying the cure and care of the sick as a busi- 
ness, a requisite degree of knowledge. Of this princi- 
ple the Supreme Court of the nation, and those of 
most of our states, have expressed approval. The gen- 
eral opinion of mankind approves of it. 

But, the Christian Scientists say, no education 
should be required of us because we do not practice 
medicine. The Supreme Court of Rhode Island took 
this view of the matter in the Mylod case, and even 
went so far as gravely to suggest that if Christian 
Scientists are to be considered as practitioners of 
medicine, then they should be entitled to a State 
Board of their own, as are homeopaths and eclectics. 
A lawyer instinctively professes, or expresses the 
highest respect for the court ; but in reading this 
opinion one cannot help recalling the opening of a 
distinguished Massachusetts lawyer, who began his ar- 
gument by saying, " Your Honors, I have the highest 
respect for the Court— except in a few gross cases." 
It seems to me, and this is said with all due deference, 
that the learned Rhode Island Court in making this 
obiter suggestion missed the whole point of the mat- 
ter. The Christian Scientists are not in the same 



CHKISTIAK SCIENCE BEFOKE THE LAW. 117 

category with homeopaths, eclectics, or any body of 
men who, whatever their scientific opinions — call them 
whims and vagaries if you will, — nevertheless profess 
to found their systems upon human knowledge, ex- 
perience, and belief in the laws of what we call mat- 
ter, and to accept as a rule the fundamental knowledge 
of mankind and the evidence of the senses. Why 
should not the Christian Scientists have a State Board 
of Examiners upon the same terms as other schools or 
systems professing to cure the sick ? We have three 
Medical Boards in this state, representing the regular 
physicians and what are called the schools of home- 
opathy and eclectism. These schools profess to differ 
from the regular profession only or chiefly in their 
methods of treatment. As a matter of fact we lay- 
men believe, rightly or wrongly, that the learned 
among them are in substantial accord. However that 
may be, there is no pretence that there is any home- 
opathic anatomy, or eclectic physiology, or that chil- 
dren are born by different methods ; in short, these 
differing schools are agreed upon the same funda- 
mentals of what has been exactly achieved in medical 
learning. They all recognize that no man can be 
equipped for medical practice under any system, who 
ignores the basic facts of life ; and our examining 
boards subject all candidates for license to the same 
examinations in every department of medicine except 
in therapeutics. Now what objection would there be 
to letting Christian Scientists have a state board under 
these conditions, greater than the objection the Chris- 
tian Scientists themselves would raise ? If Mrs. Eddy 
or Mr, Norton, or any of the cult could demonstrate 



118 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 

the possession of that knowledge of anatomy, physi- 
ology, hygiene, the action of drugs and poisons, ob- 
stetrics and other matters which all men, worthy to 
be called scientific, agree are necessary to fit one to 
care for the sick, why should he and she not be allowed 
to practice Mrs. Eddy's system, if, having attained to 
such knowledge, they still believed that system to 
contain the true therapeutic? Of course I do not 
wish to be understood as favoring any such a proposi- 
tion, or believing it practicable. I do not believe it 
possible that persons conversant with the human 
economy would be content to practice Eddyism ; but 
on the contrary, believe that if such a board as the 
Rhode Island Court suggested were established, it 
would result in the practice of medicine by Christian 
Scientists, even if they still kept to their name for the 
sake of the clientelage it would bring. 

But how can a State Board be constituted to ex- 
amine in scientific matters a class of persons who deny 
the existence of scientific knowledge as do the Eddy- 
ites, who deny the existence of matter, of disease or 
injury, of everything that is recognized throughout 
Christendom as a material fact ? How that wise Pa- 
gan Socrates would have laughed over the proposition 
that man is fitted to cure sickness in proportion to 
his denial of its existence ! How he would have rev- 
elled in putting Mrs. Eddy and her board of lecturers 
through such a cross examination as he gave to Eu- 
thydemus ! Socrates, whose sane mind preached con- 
stantly one gospel, that man must be trained and 
fitted for his work in order to do it well, that a pilot 
must know all about vessels and steering; a tailor 



CHRISTIAN SCIENCE BEFORE THE LAW. 119 

about fabrics and cutting ; a statesman about govern- 
ment and law ; and a physician about the human 
economy. The solemn nonsense uttered by intelli- 
gent men in support of this cunning and ignorant old 
lady's money -making scheme would be enough to 
make the gods shake with Olympian laughter, except 
that tears and wrath chase away the smiles when we 
contemplate how horrible it is to subject even the 
willing and credulous to the treatment of these mad 
people. It is bad enough to realize the mistakes of 
diagnosis and treatment made by men of skill and 
learning. No one but a fool believes that physicians 
are infallible, or that medicine is a perfect science ; 
no one with an atom of sense would consent to have 
the present medical practice established by law and 
the wheels of progress stopped. It is tiresome but 
necessary to say this a thousand times, in answer to 
the wearisome iteration of the quack fraternity, that 
medical law is only designed to maintain the present. 
How can we keep patience with the ever-recurring 
argument that because the learned and skilful make 
some mistakes, the ignorant and inept should have 
free hand to make errors innumerable ? Why must 
we forever answer seriously the argument, or rather 
the asseveration, that there is something solemnly 
precious in ignorance and something suspicious in 
knowledge ? A schoolboy who has once read Cicero's 
oration for Archias has the answer to this dismal pat- 
ter forever on his lips. 

Let us illustrate, with a few examples, just what 
Christian Science demands the right to do ignorantly, 
and what its opponents say should only be attempted 



120 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 

with knowledge and skill. Childbirth is not a dis- 
ease or a sickness but the healthy operation of a 
normal function. Without any attendance at all, or 
with the attendance of a Christian Scientist,— it is the 
same thing, — children are constantly brought into the 
world with labor and great pain. But, in our modern 
life especially, there are complications demanding the 
highest skill for their safe treatment ; and pain, if not 
banished, may be minimized. How horrible it is to 
imagine a case of placenta praevia, or an abnormal 
presentation in the hands of these mad people who 
pretend that the mere reading of Mrs. Eddy's book of 
jargon fits the reader to take care of any case of sick- 
ness or obstetrics ! Is it much if anything short of 
murder for an Eddyite, taught only by the contents 
of that dreary book to attend such cases as those sup- 
posed ? Again, a child swallows poison ; then there 
is a possibility, — a probability, — it may be a certainty, 
— that competent medical aid seasonably called in, will 
save the child ; what is to be thought of the parent 
who calls in the ignorant Christian Scientist, what of 
the latter who mentally argues with the symptoms of 
poisoning that he cannot recognize and excludes the 
necessary and efficient aid ? Is he not a man slaugh- 
terer, nay a murderer ? Once more, a case of small- 
pox, malignant diphtheria, or scarlet fever breaks out 
in a tenement house full of children; medical aid being 
called may cure it, or, at all events, recognizing the 
disease, may isolate the patient, disinfect the premises 
and stop the spread of contagion. The Christian 
Scientist comes, in his crass ignorance denies that there 
is any disease present and sits down in solemn mad- 



CHRISTIAN SCIEKCE BEFORE THE LAW. 121 

ness to argue with what he calls an erroneous belief 
of mortal mind — the contagion spreads and there is a 
new slaughter of innocents. Is not the so-called 
scientist a pest, and should he not be incarcerated in a 
prison or a madhouse where the community may be 
safe from him in the future ? 

There is no further provision of law needed to deal 
with these people than to widen the definition of 
medical practice sufficiently to correspond with that 
of the sanitary code — require of them before they are 
permitted to take charge of the sick, the same degree 
of knowledge that is required of a Roman Catholic, a 
Protestant or a Mohammedan. Is it too much to ask 
that the legislature do this, or shall we accept the 
argument—and it is the only one that is made in be- 
half of these people, that any scoundrel or sincere 
fanatic may commit any wicked act for reward and 
shelter himself under the plea that he considered it 
his religious duty to commit the offence. 

If all men were wise, if fallacies did not have a 
fascination for intelligent minds, if in our own day as 
ever since the world began, every unknown thing 
were not for some minds a wonderful thing, if an age 
of scepticism were not also notoriously an age of 
credulity, there would not be need even of this much 
legislation. It is for you and for other men of your 
profession and for laymen as well to turn the light 
into this reeking corner of superstition, strip the dis- 
guise away and show what is below it and you will 
not have need even of this much law, for after all the 
law has never been able to protect a fool against the 
consequence of his folly. 



HOW EAR CAN LEGISLATION AID IN MAINTAINING 

A PROPER STANDARD OF MEDICAL 

EDUCATION ? ' 

Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen : — I desire, 
first of all, to express my indebtedness to those gentle- 
men in the different States and Territories of this coun- 
try and in the British Provinces to whose courteous 
replies to a circular letter of inquiry upon the general 
topic of Medical Legislation, sent to them in the 
early part of the summer, it is due that the conclusions 
of this paper may be said with fairness, I think, to rep- 
resent not only the opinion of others besides myself, 
but prevailing opinions among those whose chief in- 
terest in medical legislation is that it shall confine the 
practice of medicine to educated persons, regardless of 
any particular views they may entertain as to ques- 
tions of therapeutics. 

It is not intended to present statistics here. My 
correspondence has not yielded any from which I 
should care to deduce conclusions, nor are they needed 
to substantiate what I hope may prove fair reasoning 
and sound deduction. 

This paper must be, therefore, a statement of what 
I conceive to be general principles and fair inferences 
from an experience of some years, as counsel of the 

1 Read before the American Social Science Association, Sept. 5, 1888. 

123 



124 CHKISTIAN SCIENCE. 

medical societies of the State and of the county of 
New York, in drafting and securing the enactment of 
the present by no means perfect medical statute of 
that State, and enforcing in the county of New York 
obedience to its provisions. 

It may be said, however, as the general result of the 
inquiries, which were made in every State and Terri- 
tory of this country, and also in the British Provinces, 
that almost every reply to the circulars expressed ap- 
proval of some system of regulating by statute the 
practice of medicine ; and the opinion was also strongly 
expressed that such legislation as has been already en- 
acted crude and imperfect though it be, has perceptibly 
improved the standard of medical education. 

At the threshold of this inquiry, it is worth while 
to lay down certain postulates. 

First of all, let it be said distinctly that such legisla- 
tion as we are about to consider is regarded by the 
courts both as constitutional and as highly desirable. 
It ought to be scarcely necessary to have to say this. 
But the opponents of statutory regulation of medical 
practice so constantly declare it to be an infringe- 
ment of the liberties of the citizen, and therefore un- 
constitutional, that one may well preface any remarks 
of this nature with the assurance that, so far as any 
principle can be considered as settled and approved by 
judicial authority, the principle involved in this sort of 
legislation stands settled and approved by the Su- 
preme Court of the United States, and that of every 
lesser commonwealth before which it has been 
brought. 

In the second place, it is necessary to state the only 



LEGISLATION AND MEDICAL EDUCATION. 125 

principle upon which such legislation can be justified. 
That principle is salus populi, — the principle of secu- 
rity, of self -protection against fraud and ignorance. It 
is a vulgar and frequent assertion of foolish persons, 
who really believe in the ^^-supernatural powers 
of the ignorant and depraved, and of knaves who, 
professing to have such powers, prey upon the credu- 
lity of their suffering fellow-creatures that the only 
purpose of medical legislation is to increase the emolu- 
ments of a favored class by obstructing entrance into 
it with such barriers as will exclude many honest but 
ignorant voters from the right to practice physic, and 
so, by limiting the number of its practitioners to the 
educated, lessen competition. It is not necessary to 
demonstrate to you the falsity of this slander, or to 
argue in favor of the propriety and justice in princi- 
ple of throwing safeguards about a profession intrusted 
more than any other with the health, honor, and life 
of the citizen. Surely the State has a right to protect 
the lives, health, and bodily welfare of its members 
against the assault of the charlatan quite as much as 
against the assault of a more courageous homicide. 
Nor is it altogether an answer to this argument to say 
that, inasmuch as a man voluntarily selects the char- 
latan as his medical attendant, while he exercises no 
choice as to the homicide, there is no analogy between 
the two cases. It is quite impossible for me to see in 
what regard, except cowardice, a man who, with ab- 
solutely no knowledge of the human economy or the 
effect upon it of drugs, attempts to practice medicine 
for fee or reward differs, when his practice proves 
fatal, from the less crafty murderer who for reward, 



126 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 

if not for fee, knocks his victim on the head. There 
is this difference also between the two offences,— the 
quack's is chronic, the homicide's sporadic. But, as 
between the courageous homicide and the venders of 
quack remedies compounded with morphia and like 
poisons, the former seems admirable. It is said, in- 
deed, that the patient having his choice of medical 
advisers will exercise it wisely ; and, if he does not, 
the civil remedy for malpractice, accruing to himself 
or his representatives, is a sufficient remedy for one 
foolish enough to seek such advice. But civil remedies 
are expensive luxuries of doubtful result, and, besides 
that, the interest of the community does not centre in 
punishing an offence committed on one of its mem- 
bers, but in preventing its repetition against others. 
I am not aware that it is recognized as a defence to a 
charge of homicide occurring, say, in the prize-ring, 
that the deceased invited his antagonist to fight with 
him in an amiable contention for a purse, which should 
be the fee or reward of the victor; and, indeed, it 
seems to me that the prize-fighter, unlucky enough to 
kill his opponent, deserves more sympathy than the 
charlatan ; for his antagonist had a chance to win the 
fee and perhaps do the killing himself, whereas be- 
tween quack and patient the former stands to win the 
fee, while the latter will never compel his adviser to 
swallow his own prescription. 

In considering what legislation can do in bettering 
any social condition, we must never forget that the 
best law which can be framed is but an exceedingly 
clumsy instrument for the enforcement of even the 
elementary moral obligations that are clear to all of 



LEGISLATION AND MEDICAL EDUCATION. 127 

us. Almost everybody of cultivation can see a reason 
for prohibiting — not for the sake of those directly 
interested, but as harmful to the community — prize- 
fights, duels, bull-fights, bridge jumpings, and all other 
performances, including suicide, whereby foolish men 
not only risk their own lives, which might be no great 
loss to us, but set a pernicious and demoralizing ex- 
ample. The offence against society by such precedents 
is so palpable and gross that a very crude mind will 
assent to the justice of their punishment when com- 
mitted and the forbidding of their occurrence. But 
the transgression of the charlatan is somewhat more 
subtle and a thousandfold more dangerous ; yet, be- 
cause his services are sought by his victim in the 
belief that they are a prevention, not a source of 
danger, many consider his acts as matter of private 
interest, and overlook the public wrong. From the 
standpoint of morals alone, the quack, from whose 
ignorance, and worse than ignorance, a patient's death 
results, stands in the same relation to one who has 
committed murder while engaged in robbery that the 
subtle wrecker of a great corporation does to the un- 
lucky scamp who has stolen the wherewithal to get 
his daily bread or rum, as the case might be. The 
difficulty of tracing the effect to its cause is the safety 
of the former offender, and it is not unfair to say that 
the chief wrongdoing punishable by law is clumsiness 
in execution. To succeed in crime, one must be an 
artist. 

It is when we come to seek a legal remedy against 
the immoralities of quackery that the difficulty of 
reaching them without making laws themselves ob- 



128 CHEISTIAK SCIENCE. 

jectionable becomes apparent. Bentham has very- 
well pointed out that moral and statutory law have 
identical purposes and are governed by the same 
principles, differing only in this : that, although both 
are circumferences in the same plane, they are con- 
centric and of unequal radii. Each circumference has 
the same centre, — namely, the greatest happiness of 
each and of all; but the circumference of morals 
bounds the entire plane of human action, whereas that 
of law, of which the radius may be said to be prac- 
ticability of enforcement, has a much narrower scope. 
Whatever is legal is, or certainly should be, moral. 
But there are a thousand moralities the attempt to 
enforce which by law would lead to evils far greater 
than those sought to be obviated. In one sense, law 
itself may be almost called an evil, since it is not only 
a restriction of freedom in action, but a restriction 
which unfortunately can often be enforced only at the 
cost of inflicting lesser evils than it is designed to 
prevent : thus, for example, the existing medical stat- 
utes of most of our States recognize, as the sole 
license for the practice of medicine, the possession by 
the licentiate of a diploma from a chartered college 
conferring the degree of doctor of medicine. And, 
while it may be perfectly true that the probabilities 
are greatly in favor of a beneficial result from these 
laws in limiting the number of uneducated practition- 
ers of physic, it is also quite as true that a factitious 
value is given by such legislation to a mere parchment, 
and a standard set which cannot be higher than that 
of the poorest college the diploma of which is recog- 
nized as a license ; and it is quite possible that in many 



LEGISLATION 'AND MEDICAL EDUCATION. 129 

cases persons of fair attainments acquired through 
extra collegiate study may be debarred, temporarily 
at all events, from a right possessed by a far more 
ignorant graduate of some contemptible school incor- 
porated by a too complaisant legislature. These inci- 
dental hardships under existing laws are more than 
offset by the increased security of society against 
ignorant pretenders ; but they show how necessary it 
is to keep it in mind that a statute must be not only 
right in its purpose, but must neither work greater 
evil than it prevents nor be impracticable of enforce- 
ment. 

Of course, no penal or restrictive law can be effect- 
ively enforced if its purpose does not commend itself 
to the moral sense of the community ; and every en- 
actment that cannot be vigorously enforced is an en- 
cumbrance to the statute book, useless lumber, like 
the purchases of Mrs. Toodles at auction-rooms of 
coffins and door-plates that might be handy some day, 
— nay, worse than useless, for, like lumber in a dark 
garret, such statutes are stumbling-blocks for the un- 
wary. 

The law is a schoolmaster over and above all things. 
Its chief value lies in the fact that its daily enforce- 
ment is a constant voice crying in the wilderness 
against the evils that it prohibits and punishes. Any 
one so unfortunate, or perhaps I should say fortunate, 
as to be called often to a police court must at times 
feel that the attempt by legislation to check even the 
gross and palpable crimes against person and property 
is a never-ending toil of Sisyphus. The stone seems 
to roll back every night as far as it is rolled up every 



130 CHKISTIAN SCIENCE. 

morning. The same faces turn up, the same crimes 
are committed over and over by the same persons. 
"We grow disheartened when we seek the good effect 
of a penal statute among the individuals who have 
felt its heavy hand, — and this is most sincerely to be 
regretted, — but we pluck up heart when we see the 
number of individuals who are deterred from crime 
and educated to an appreciation of the common rights 
by the law's enforcement. 

The chief purpose of legislators in times past was 
the punishment and remedy of evil committed. The 
tendency of modern law is toward prevention. ¥e 
are seeing more and more the wisdom of the clever 
Irishman who "hollered before he was hurt," because 
he could see little use in hallooing afterward. 

What has been said up to this point may seem, per- 
haps, if not irrelevant to the topic, nevertheless such 
a statement of general principles as it is not necessary 
to make before an audience of students of social 
science. And, if the words uttered here found no 
audience beyond these walls, it might have been well 
to consider only the desirable features of a good 
medical act. But I owe the honor of being asked to 
address you to the fact that it has been my profes- 
sional privilege for some years to advise those medical 
societies that have been striving to protect both the 
public and the medical profession of the State of New 
York against pretenders. What is said here is carried 
to many beyond reach of our voices. What to you 
may be truisms are to many intelligent men theorems 
to be demonstrated. Medical legislation is never 
asked for, but a cloud of misunderstanding and mig- 



LEGISLATION AND MEDICAL EDUCATION. 131 

statement at once arises, and the proposed measure is 
attacked as unsound in principle and unfair in practice. 

It has therefore seemed proper both to clear away 
all such mistiness before answering in the most gen- 
eral terms the question at the head of this paper, and 
to make plain to every one who may hear or read these 
words the spirit in which the medical societies of New 
York are acting in this matter, — a spirit that must 
commend itself to men of fair minds and common sense. 

Starting, then, with these general principles, — that 
under its police power the State has authority to reg- 
ulate the practice of medicine, and that no law can be 
of real utility that cannot be enforced actively, — we 
may examine within what limits it is wise to exercise 
that authority, and how far its exercise can aid in 
maintaining a proper standard of medical education. 

If no law can be effectively enforced that arouses 
strong antagonism in the community at large, it is 
manifest that a medical law enacted to favor any 
special class of practitioners of medicine, to uphold or 
suppress any theory of medical practice, to establish 
any set of regulations as to fees, or that is otherwise 
obnoxious to the great body of citizens would prob- 
ably soon become a dead letter and positively harmful 
to the whole medical profession. In the Medical Rec- 
ord of September 11, 1886, I endeavored, in an article 
entitled the " Evolution of the Apothecary," l to illus- 
trate this point by tracing the struggle of the College 

of Phvsicians to reserve to its licentiates the exclu- 

t/ 

sive right under its charter to prescribe medicine. 
After some two hundred years of successful prosecu- 

1 See page 145. 



132 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 

tions of apothecaries and others, the college met its 
Waterloo in 1703, when Apothecary Rose, on his ap- 
peal to the House of Lords from the judgment of the 
courts in favor of the college, succeeded in having his 
appeal sustained, not on points of law, but because the 
system in vogue seemed to the Peers absurd, as neces- 
sitating the employment in trifling cases of two or 
three persons at large fees, — a physician to prescribe, 
an apothecary to dispense, and perhaps a surgeon to 
operate, — a state of things that a Peer would not sub- 
mit to in the case of his sick servant, and would not 
require a poor man to submit to in his own case. The 
physicians had their fee system and their professional 
pride to thank for their defeat in this as in some other 
instances. This decision having made it possible for 
every ignoramus to tinker with the health of John 
Bull, it happened in time that the apothecaries, who had 
routed the physicians on the point of fees and acquired 
a right to prescribe as well as dispense their own 
drugs, after a hundred years' experience of the results 
of their freedom, during which period general medical 
education had sunk to a dismal condition and quackery 
had flowered abundantly, procured from Parliament 
the amendment to their charter known as the Apoth- 
ecaries Act, whereby their Hall was empowered to ex- 
amine and license apothecaries. The enactment of 
this statute according to Sir Henry Halford, who had 
opposed its passage, "raised the standard of that 
branch of the profession amazingly." 

In other words, the very men who procured the ex- 
tension to themselves of the right to prescribe, because 
of the burdensome regulations of the physician, solic- 



LEGISLATION AND MEDICAL EDUCATION. 133 

ited a restriction of that right when they found that 
charlatanry and ignorance were rapidly getting con- 
trol of general practice. In this page of history, we 
find evidence that a law prescribing, with a view to 
the general good, educational qualifications for practi- 
tioners of physic will obtain favor where statutes par- 
taking of a trades-union spirit, using that word not in 
its better sense, will fail. I use the term " trades- 
union " here for lack of a better, and not as one neces- 
sarily conveying an objectionable idea. In the sense 
that a trades-union is a combination of artificers to im- 
prove their moral, physical, and mental condition by 
all lawful means consistent with a due regard to the 
rights of the community at large, it is a perfectly 
proper organization, and much to be commended as an 
element in the common welfare. In so far as such 
a combination, however, seeks to carry out a plan for 
procuring high wages by violently obstructing others 
in their rights to earn a livelihood in legitimate ways, 
it is an intolerable evil in society. What is true of 
the trades-union of artificers is equally true of organi- 
zations of capital similarly designed ; but, both in 
handicrafts and trade, — the ostensible objects of which 
are avowedly selfish, being the pursuit of wealth or 
the earning of livelihood, — such combinations as these 
are more understandable, if not more defensible, than 
like combinations among men engaged in the quest of 
scientific truth. The avowed object of incorporating 
medical societies is stated in their charters, in New 
York at least, to be "to contribute to the diffusion of 
true science and particularly the knowledge of the 
healing art." When they transgress these limits, and 



134 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 

seek to establish burdensome fee systems or to forcibly 
check what they consider schismatic opinions, the law- 
interferes to restrain them within their proper bounds. 
The courts have wisely, in most instances, declined to 
pronounce upon any questions of opinion or to inter- 
pret the word " physician " in acts regulating medical 
practice so as to favor the therapeutical systems of any 
body of practitioners. It is all one to the law whether 
the doctrine of similia or the doctrine of contraria 
prevail, whether the patient be dosed with the highest 
potency or the most heroic bolus ; and this point was 
settled finally and wisely in the State of New York 
by the case of Corsi vs. Maretzek (4 E. D. Smith, 1), 
where the court refused to accept the contention that 
a homeopathist was not a physician in the legal sense 
of the term because he followed a system of healing 
disapproved of by the majority of practitioners of 
medicine. No statute can be effective that is even 
suspected of the design to shackle or suppress opinion. 
Free thought is the breath, the life, of the scientific 
search for truth, as humility is its badge. "When a 
man or a profession reaches the point where intoler- 
ance and self-satisfaction take the place of humility 
and fair inquiry, paresis of the soul has commenced. 
It is the law of our existence that 

" The old order changeth, yielding place to new ; 
And God fulfils himself in many ways, 
Lest one good custom should corrupt the world." 

I dwell upon this point because the reason that we 
do not have in New York to-day a State Board of 
Medical Examiners, such as we find in Illinois and 
European countries, and such as is requisite to any ef- 



LEGISLATION AND MEDICAL EDUCATION. 135 

f ective scheme for securing a fair average of education 
among medical licentiates, is due to the fact that it 
has proved impossible up to this time to bring into ac- 
cord as to the organization of such a board regular 
physicians, homeopaths, and eclectics. About three- 
quarters of the entire number of medical practitioners 
in the State are regular physicians ; that is, practition- 
ers calling themselves by the name of no " school " or 
" sect." They number something like six thousand. 
The homeopaths and eclectics number about twenty- 
one hundred. Bills to create one or more central 
boards of medical examiners have been introduced 
into the legislature during the last four years at the 
instance of each of these parties. These bills have 
agreed substantially in all points save two : first, the 
examination in therapeutics ; and, second, the organ- 
ization of the board. The physicians have insisted 
that their numerical ratio of three-fourths entitles them 
to a representation in the board of at least two-thirds. 
The two " schools " insist that, if this ratio should be 
given, their candidates would be plucked and their 
"schools" effaced, and that, when this was accom- 
plished, the physicians would at once order new vials 
of enormous size, larger boluses and nastier drugs than 
ever before, that even the daughter of the horse-leech 
would be silent from satiety, and the cup and lancet 
would once more drench the land with gore. 

In other words, we have this condition of things : 
Three parties exist whose interests are at stake in the 
proposed legislation. All declare that they favor re- 
stricting the practice to men who have studied chemis- 
try, botany, physics, anatomy, physiology, diagnosis, 



136 CHRISTIAN SCIEKCE. 

microscopy, etc. The homeopaths and eclectics hold 
no sectarian views as to the atomic theory or the law 
of gravitation, and agree with those whom they dub 
allopaths as to which has the greater number of ribs 
a man or a woman. But, when we come to materia 
medica and therapeutics, we find a "state of things." 
Col. Jones, having a severe pain in the vicinity of his 
sword-belt, sends for his army surgeon, a regular 
physician ; the baby has a sensation in its correspond- 
ing region, and Mrs. Jones calls in her homeopathic 
adviser, — for Jones indulges her in matters affecting 
her own baby ; the nurse, experiencing a similar agita- 
tion, tries an eclectic ; and the old "mammy" in the 
kitchen, feeling a like distress, sticks a pin in the care- 
fully concealed rag baby she keeps for such occasions. 
All experience relief ; and each, like the pedler who 
was kicked off four landings of a factory in quick suc- 
cession, is lost in admiration of the beauty of the system. 
Let us admit the truth that, while surgery has be- 
come almost an exact science as compared to its sister, 
— physic, — the latter is yet in the condition that un- 
questioning faith in the efficacy of medication and a 
willingness to break a lance for a system of therapeu- 
tics is to be found rather at the bottom than at the top 
of the profession. Therefore, whatever our beliefs or 
prejudices, we may as well make up our minds that 
no law will be tolerated that shall endeavor openly or 
covertly to favor or obstruct any system of medical 
practice as a system, regardless of the attainments of 
its professors. Whatever the facts may be, the law 
considers that the true physician is no blind partisan of 
any theory. He knows how feeble his best efforts are 



LEGISLATION AND MEDICAL EDUCATION. 137 

to combat disease, how few the medicaments that can be 
used with certain results. In proportion as he is learned 
and wise, he pins his faith neither to a doctrine of 
similia nor of contraria, realizing that differences of 
opinion arise not from knowledge, but from ignorance. 

The stumbling-blocks in the way of every effort to 
achieve wise medical legislation are : first, the ig- 
norance and greed of the believers in and practicers 
of ^^m-supernatural methods of treating disease ; 
second, jealousies among the more intelligent adher- 
ents to "isms" ; third, jealousies between the mother 
church of medicine and those of her children that 
wish to make of their specialties separate professions ; 
fourth, the obstruction from vested interests that 
consider themselves threatened, — the incorporated 
schools that have some capital invested, and regard 
their power to confer a diploma operating as a license 
to practice medicine as their chief stock in trade. 

The condition of our statute books to-day is this : 
they contain (1) special acts incorporating medical, 
pharmaceutical, and dental schools, with here and there 
a general act for that purpose ; (2) acts incorporating 
medical societies of physicians and of sectarian prac- 
titioners of motley nomenclature ; (3) general acts regu- 
lating the practice of physic and surgery ; (4) general 
acts regulating the practice of dentistry ; (5) similar 
acts regulating the practice of pharmacy ; (6) sanitary 
regulations and laws creating health boards. 

This jumble is itself an evil and an efficient cause 
of the propagation of false ideas. A logical law, 
which will of itself be an educator, will recognize that 
the principle on which all these statutes are to be de- 



138 CHEISTIAK SCIENCE. 

fended is that already indicated, — the right of the 
State to protect the health as well as the life and the 
property of the citizen. One health statute will then 
be enacted, and a responsible board created that will 
have in charge the arrangements of quarantine and 
sanitation and also the licensing of medical practition- 
ers of every sort; and here I contend that the 
dentist and the pharmacist, thoroughly accomplished 
in their calling, are both medical men, and that, the 
sooner they are so recognized, the sooner existing 
jealousies as to them will die out, and the scientific 
character of the profession and its specialties will be 
raised. The student of medicine and pharmacy must 
go hand in hand for a while at the outset of their 
career. The former goes forward to the battle with 
disease. The latter remains behind to provide suit- 
able ammunition. They are both fighting in the same 
cause, and will fight much better if each recognizes his 
fellowship with the other. It is equally true that the 
dentist is a specialist in medicine. To deny to these 
men professional standing is to repeat the history of 
the past and to create discord and jealousy among 
those who are working in a common cause. 

Legislation can aid in the education of all these fel- 
low-workers chiefly by vesting the licensing power in 
a central Board of Medical Examiners, and, to some 
extent, under the diploma standard : (1) by fixing 
a minimum age under which they will not be allowed 
to practice their calling ; (2) by requiring of each of 
them a fixed term of study of certainly not less than 
two graded years, leaving to the board, where created, 
the care of details ; (3) by requiring proof by examina- 



LEGISLATION AND MEDICAL EDUCATION. 139 

tion or certificate that each candidate for license had 
studied before beginning his professional course at 
least those branches of a general education in which 
law students are examined in this State before they 
commence their legal studies ; (4) by declaring that no 
medical school — including in the terms schools of 
dentistry, pharmacy, and midwifery — shall be in- 
corporated by special act, and providing a general law 
for the incorporation of such schools only upon proof 
made of the possession by the incorporators of suf- 
ficient capital — say not less than a hundred thousand 
dollars — and teaching plant to justify the belief that 
the school will be capable of exercising faithfully its 
franchises, Such an act should contain stringent pro- 
visions for its own enforcement and for the forfeiture 
of abused charters. How useless the mere enactment 
may be is shown by the fact that section six of chapter 
114 of the New York Sessions Laws of 1853 contains a 
general provision of this nature. Nevertheless, since 
its passage, some six or more medical colleges have 
been incorporated by special act of the legislature; 
and had it not been for the vetoes of Governors Cleve- 
land and Hill, when their attention was called to this 
general statute by the medical societies, at least one col- 
lege would have regained by special act its charter of 
which the courts had deprived it. No greater service 
can be rendered to the cause of medical education by 
the State than the exercise of care in creating medical 
schools, and holding them to strict responsibility 
when created. The latter will never be done, I fear, 
except when the laws are invoked by medical societies. 
(5) A minimum course of medical study should be pre- 



140 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 

scribed, in which a grade of at least seventy per cent, 
should be attained on examination. The regulation of 
all details of examination should be most wisely left 
to the board of examiners. But the topics in which 
examinations should be had might well be specified in 
the statute; and I incline strongly to think that it 
would be most wise to omit any examination in those 
obscure topics of therapeutics and materia medica, 
upon which all medical heresies have been begotten 
by unscientific minds. One who should creditably 
pass his examinations in botany, chemistry, physics, 
anatomy, surgery, physiology, hygiene, diagnosis, ob- 
stetrics, and microscopies, especially if his clinical ex- 
amination should show him to be educated in a true 
sense to observe and draw sound deductions from ob- 
servation, rather than crammed like a parrot, might 
well be trusted to form his own conclusions and pursue 
his own studies as judgment should dictate in the terra 
incognita of therapeutics. 

It has been already said, but it cannot be repeated 
too often, that the law has nothing to do with medical 
theories. The utmost it can do successfully is to pre- 
scribe that none shall practice medicine except persons 
educated in those branches of science that all admit 
are essential to an understanding of morbid condi- 
tions of our species, and possessed besides of a fair 
general education. It cannot prohibit the practice of 
sectarian medicine and such delusions as mind-cure 
and Christian Science, for this would be an assumption 
by the law to prescribe what system of healing shall 
be followed ; and it might as reasonably command — 
as, indeed, I believe it does in Mormondom — that all 



LEGISLATION AND MEDICAL EDUCATION. 141 

the sick should be treated by anointing with oil in 
conjunction with prayer by the elders. 

If a man who has passed his examinations in such 
branches as above indicated shall conclude to adhere 
uniformly in practice to the doctrine of similia or of 
contraria, or even to the profundities of Mumbo 
Jumbo, or mind-cure, the law cannot prevent him. 
For his errors, he will be liable always in damages, no 
matter what system he adopts ; and, with that, we 
must be content. If the education required of him 
does not keep him to the faith, we may perhaps find 
in some cases that his departure from it is the opening 
of a new way to fresh truth. (6) Finally, the law 
should not recognize any diploma as of itself conferring 
a right to practice medicine. Even if the possession of 
such a document should be required as an antecedent 
to examination by the health board, it should not be 
allowed to take the place of such examination. It is 
to the interest not only of the public, but of every 
medical college of high standard, that the diplomas of 
what have become known as " diploma mills " shall be 
deprived of the licensing power, which is their sole value. 

Any scheme of medical legislation will hereafter, of 
course, embrace that great safeguard against impos- 
ture and efficient tracer of frauds, the system of regis- 
tration, whereunder no one is allowed to practice 
medicine who has not made a public record under 
oath of his name, origin, and credentials for license. 

Beyond the point here indicated, it would not be 
wise for legislation to go. The chief desiderata in a 
good law are brevity, simplicity, and lack of detail. 
If a diploma standard is to be maintained, it would 



142 CHEISTIAN SCIENCE. 

certainly be desirable that the statute should provide 
that only diplomas of colleges giving graded instruc- 
tion and requiring preliminary examination of their 
matriculants should be received as licenses. 

But it may be well to say once more that the mere 
enactment of a law against a vicious practice will be 
no deterrent to the transgressor, and, therefore, of no 
service to the cause of education. He must realize 
that the law is enforced ; and, in order that it be en- 
forced, somebody must be charged with carrying out 
its provisions. In the State of New York, the regular 
medical societies have of late charged themselves with 
the duty of executing the medical act. Such acts 
have been upon the statute book for more than a hun- 
dred years. But prior to 1880 they had fallen into 
neglect, largely owing to the clumsiness with which 
they were drafted. In that year, the State Medical 
Society secured the passage of a new law, and in 1887 
of a codification or revision of all the medical statutes ; 
but the law in this State is yet far from perfect, and 
chiefly for the reason that there is 'no central body 
having control of its execution. The most that the 
medical societies can do is to punish those who prac- 
tice without diplomas. They are powerless to exercise 
any supervision over those granting the license. In 
this regard, the statute of the State of Illinois is far 
more efficient than ours ; and the Health Board of 
that State has entitled itself to the commendation of all 
who are informed of its excellent and efficient work. 

But the County Society of New York has done 
enough to show that even a poor law can be of ad- 
vantage to the cause of medical education. The ex- 



LEGISLATION AND MEDICAL EDUCATION. 143 

ample of its prosecutions has stirred up allied societies 
to action, and has constantly called public attention 
to the fact that the practice of quackery is not safe 
within its jurisdiction. Adopting the new code of 
ethics, it has shown conclusively to all who have 
watched its course that its members have not had in 
mind the suppression of any system of healing the 
sick only because they disapproved the methods of 
that system. It has recognized that the utmost limit 
to which the law can properly go is to provide that 
nobody shall practice medicine at all, by which term 
the courts understand the use of drugs and instru- 
ments, unless he has the slender educational qualifica- 
tion prescribed by the statute. If possessed of that 
qualification, the society concede that the practitioner 
has a right to use whatever system may commend 
itself to his understanding or lack of understanding. 

The prejudices and jealousies that prevented the 
passage of the Examiners Bills have been already al- 
luded to. But, although those bills failed to become 
law, nevertheless, when the present statute incorpo- 
rating their points of agreement was obtained by an 
alliance of all parties, a distinct advance was made, in 
that the homeopaths and eclectics were convinced 
that, whether the other societies agreed or not with 
them in matters of practice, they were willing to join 
hands with them in securing, if not the best legisla- 
tion, at least the best possible under the circumstances ; 
and that they were quite capable of bringing forward 
in good faith a bill actually what it appeared to be, 
and not secretly designed for the destruction of 
schismatics. And it is very safe to say that it is only 



144 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 

a question now of agitation of public and professional 
opinion that is necessary in the State of New York to 
bring about such legislation as will obliterate all sects 
in medicine, not indeed by harassing the individual 
practitioner or legislating against any system of prac- 
tice, but by educating the public mind to the fact that 
no one should be intrusted with the practice of any 
system who has not a fair attainment in those branches 
of study which all admit must be necessary to any one 
expecting to devote himself to the treatment of dis- 
ease ; and that every one is entitled to the name of 
physician who is learned in his science, skilled in his 
art, and capable in his profession of trying all things, 
holding fast what is true, facing bravely the errors of 
others, and admitting candidly his own, and, above 
all, recognizing the possibility of honest differences of 
opinion, which can be settled only by honest investi- 
gation and kindly exposition. 1 

If the law will forbid the practice of medicine to 
all but those who give proof of a fair general educa- 
tion and reasonable attainments in the branches of 
sciences and medical study as to which there are no 
" schools," it will do all that can be asked. Its licen- 
tiates will be too intelligent to indulge, as a class, in 
vagaries, sectarian medicine will disappear or dwindle 
to insignificance, and the physician will be free to fol- 
low where the torch of Truth lights the way. 

1 Shortly after this paper was read, a system of State Examination was 
established and still remains in New York. In 1893 tne practice of med- 
icine, dentistry, pharmacy, etc., were regulated by one Public Health 
Law. The suggestions of this paper have been adopted. The medical 
schools require a graded course of three or four years, and preliminary 
education. The standard of medical education and the value of the 
diploma have been greatly advanced. 



VI. 

THE EVOLUTION OF THE APOTHECARY. 1 

The expression by Mr. Fox in an after-dinner 
speech, when on his special mission to St. Petersburg, 

of a patriotic belief that the " American language " 
was destined to become the universal speech, excited 
comment and curiosity. Matter-of-fact Britons re- 
sented this appropriation of their mother-tongue as an 
application of cuckoo methods to linguistics. Polyglot 
Prussians yearned to acquire a new dialect. 

Apothecary is one of those words in the use of which 
American differs from English and resembles Scotch ; 
for with us. as in Scotland, prior to the passage of the 
pharmaceutical acts, if not now — it denotes one whose 
business, of a trading nature, consists strictly in sell- 
ing, compounding, and dispensing drugs, chemicals, 
and kindred wares. The introduction into the stock- 
in-trade of soda-water, cigars, and confectionery, sho""- 
a tendency of the business to revert, even in 
cities, to its type : for grocers and poticaries were for- 
merly a single brotherhood, and were first incorporat 
into one worshipful society. Every grocer had an 
;'- : -;, by virtue of which he was a poticary. 

In the fourth year of his pedantic and witch-hating 
reign. James I. granted a charter to " The Wardours 
and Fellowship of the Mystery of Grocers of the City 

iNcw YaA Medical Record, Sept n, l88d 

145 



146 CHEISTIAN SCIENCE. 

of London," making of them a body corporate. But, 
as often happens where a child of his works secures a 
recognized social status for his family, the lesser, or 
junior, portion of this Mystery soon felt itself finer 
and more mysterious than the entire fellowship. 
Moreover, the blending of trades had its own incon- 
veniences, easily conceivable to one who has been in 
rural districts where it still obtains. Our own Galen, 
who is heroic, once prescribed a very drastic remedy, 
and a combined haberdasher-grocer-apothecary of 
Westchester essayed to supply it. But the unusual 
dose, which " no one out here has ever took," drove 
him to a dispensatory, where for fifteen minutes he 
groped befogged, searching if a city man had anything 
in common with the ostrich. Only fear of not selling 
the drug decided him to risk decreasing the population. 1 

Perhaps episodes of this kind as well as a realization 
of the need of special care and training for the safe 
dispensing of medicines induced the " well-beloved 
Theodore de Mayerne and Henry Atkins," his " dis- 
creet and faithful physicians," to make those represen- 
tations to James that induced him, in the thirteenth 
year of his reign, to separate the apothecaries from 
the grocers after nine years of union, and grant the 
former a separate charter under the corporate name of 
" The Master, Wardens, and Society of the Art and 
Mystery of Apothecaries of the City of London." 

But although it was through the intercession of 
physicians that the apothecary, thus freed from the 

1 Thus Romeo argued with his apothecary, hesitating to sell poison con- 
trary to law : " The world affords no law to make thee rich ; then be not 
poor, but break it and take this." — Act v., Scene I. 



THE EVOLUTION OF THE APOTHECARY. 147 

environment of grocerdom, was able to set up his own 
mystery, we may be very sure that the said Theodore 
and Henry never intended his evolution to go on until 
he should become, as he now is in England, a general 
practitioner of medicine. On the contrary, the new 
charter provided that the rights of the College of 
Physicians should not be abridged, that the college 
should exercise a certain supervision over the company, 
and that the apothecaries should consult the physicians 
on the use and properties of medicine. 1 The exclusive 
privilege granted to the apothecaries by their charter 
was this : " No person, free of the Grocers', or any 
other mystery in London, except those of the Apoth- 
ecaries' Company, shall keep any apothecary's shop, 
or make, compound, administer, sell, send out, adver- 
tise, or offer for sale any medicines, distilled waters, 
compounded chemical oils, decoctions, syrups, con- 
serves, eclegmas, electuaries, medical condiments, pills, 
powders, lozenges, oils, unguents, or plasters ; or oth- 
erwise in any way practice the faculty of an apoth- 
ecary," etc., under a penalty of £5. The only limita- 
tions upon this power were the said provision pre- 
serving the rights of the College of Physicians, whose 
licentiates might, under the statute, dispense medicine 
in their own practice, and the further provision that 
" approved chirurgeons " might enjoy their art " as 
much as belongeth and appertaineth to the composi- 
tion and application of outer salves or medicines only, 

i a Proviso semper quod pro tot et tal' ordinationibus quae medicamenta 
aut compositiones et usum earundem concernent' advocabunt de tempore 
in tempus Praesidentem et quatuor censores, seu Gubernat', Colleg' & Com- 
munital' Medicorum London, aut alios Medicos Praesidentem praedict, 
nominand' pro avisamento in hac parte," Charter, May 30, Jac. I, 



148 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 

so that they do not vend or expose to sale to others 
such salves or remedies, according to the common man- 
ner of the apothecaries of London." But these pro- 
visions were not restrictions, in any proper sense, upon 
the monopoly of the trade. Physicians and surgeons 
could only dispense medicine in their own practice ; 
they could not deal in it ; and it would seem that this 
statement of the " Encyclopaedia Britannica," under 
the title " Apothecary " .: " The members of this society 
do not possess and never have possessed any exclusive 
power to deal in or sell drugs," is incorrect as a legal 
proposition. 

The broad charter obtained for the physicians from 
Henry VIII. by Cardinal Wolsey, giving their college 
the licensing power theretofore vested in the clergy 
alone, which charter Mary confirmed, made the College 
of Physicians supreme in the whole field of medicine. 
It could license persons to examine and advise the sick, 
write prescriptions, dispense drugs, 1 and perform sur- 
gical operations ; 2 whereas surgeons and apothecaries 
were narrowly limited in their respective functions. 
Whenever an apothecary or surgeon attempted to pre- 
scribe for the sick he stood in the peril of the law, and 
the college was not slow to punish him. Thus in 1602 
one Jenkins, a member of the College of Surgeons, 
did "give judgment on urines and undertake cures." 

1 See the case of the Attorney-General ex rel Apoth. Co. v. The Royal 
College of Physicians (L. J., N. S., Ch. 30, 757), infra. 

2 32 Hen. VIII., C. 40, 3, enlarging the original charter of the college, 
recites that the science of physic " doth comprehend, include, and contain 
the knowledge of surgery as a special member and part of the same," 
with which statement Dr. Davies, in his pamphlet on medical legislation, 
compares this saying of Celsus : " Illud ante omnia scire convenit, quod 
(mines medicin<z partes inexce sunt } ut ex toto separari non possint" 



THE EVOLUTION OF THE APOTHECARY. 149 

The Censors of the College of Physicians did then 
cause his arrest, and his counsel obtained, thereupon, 
a writ of Habeas Corpus ; but on the return of the 
writ it appeared, in answer to the questions of Sir 
John Popham, Lord Chief Justice, that Jenkins could 
not justify his practice by the college seal, but could 
only plead : " I practiced as a surgeon, and in that art 
the use of inward remedies is often necessary." 
Whereupon Sir John sent him back to durance, saying 
substantially, as Goodall sums him up in his history of 
the college : " (1) There is no sufficient license without 
the college seal. (2) No surgeon, as a surgeon, may 
practice physic ; no, not for any disease, though it be 
the great pox." And Sir John then further laid down 
six other propositions most disagreeable to Jenkins and 
like sinners, but of exceeding comfort to the college. 

Before the incorporation of the College of Physi- 
cians the clergy were the source of license to practice 
physic. Successive bulls of the popes had failed to 
toss the priesthood out of this pleasant field of science. 
The college, as a corporate entity, seemed not only to 
have inherited the pride that marked the ecclesiastical 
body and caused the angels to fall, but also to have 
manifested it by self -mutilation, after the fashion of 
religious enthusiasts from the time of Atys to our own 
day. It was astraddle the bladder of professional 
pride that the apothecary floated on a silvery sea of 
shillings, sixpences, and half-crowns, to the humble 
but lucrative position of counter-prescriber and gen- 
eral practitioner, while the physicians, by their own 
acts, were impotent to stop him. 

The surgeons had been originally barbers and smiths, 



150 CHEISTIAN SCIENCE. 

i. e. 9 artficers ; the apothecaries had been grocers, and 
still were tradesmen; 1 so that the physicians, not- 
withstanding their charter contemplated that they 
should dispense medicines and treat wounds and 
sores, enacted by-laws forbidding admission to their 
body to any who compounded or supplied medicine 
for gain, " surgeons, drug-compounders, or any other 
artificers of that sort, lest, perchance, if such men be 
admitted into the college we may seem not to have 
sufficiently consulted our own dignity or the honor of 
our country's universities, which, however, we ought, 
and we always desire, to attend with the deepest 
veneration." They decreed expulsion to any member 
of their college so far forgetting himself as to join 
the College of Surgeons or Company of Apothecaries, 2 
and refused to license members of either body who 
did not first renounce membership therein. 3 The re- 
fusal of physicians to dispense even their own medi- 
cines; thus necessitating a fee for advice only, and 
the expense and inconvenience to patients, especially 
in the country, of calling on the physician and apothe- 
cary, and possibly the surgeon, for a single case, were 
sufficient reasons why, in the course of time, the 
vender of drugs came to be consulted as to their use. 
Here was the apothecary's opportunity, especially if 
he had, as was commonly the case, a surgeon's license 
also. He was not bound to charge a specified fee, 

1 They are so rated to-day in the Bankrupt Act. 

2 See By-Laws of College of Physicians, as recast in 1687. 
3 "Antequam quispiam in permissorum numerum admittatur, si forte 

chirurgorum aut pharmacopolarum sodalitio olim donatus fuerit, sodalitii 
istius privilegiis omnibus renunciet," etc. By-laws College of Physicians 
182$. See Attorney-General v. Royal College of Physicians, infra. 



THE EVOLUTION OF THE APOTHECARY. 151 

and the average man, though unwilling to pay for 
medical advice, is ready enough to purchase a nos- 
trum. We love to be humbugged in gross ways. A 
remedy is tangible value for money ; if the swallow- 
ing of it is followed by considerable discomfort, the 
buyer is all the surer that it is efficacious. Advice, 
especially if consonant with common sense, seems less 
valuable. If a wise physician should prescribe exer- 
cise and abstinence from rum to a victim of one of 
the commonest forms of " malaria," his fee would be 
paid grudgingly by one willing to spend cheerfully a 
tenth of his income in Golden Preparations and Cer- 
tain Ague Cures, while keeping up, at considerable 
expense, the cause of his symptoms. So it came about 
that the apothecaries, unmindful of any gratitude 
they might owe to the memory of those faithful and 
discreet physicians who assisted their society into the 
world, and regardless of the limitations of their 
charter, fell to prescribing over their counters, and 
from that proceeded to visiting the sick. Let us hope 
that one cause of their success in gaining patients, as 
set out by one Doctor Murett, in 1669, in his lamenta- 
tion over their encroachments on the privileges of 
physicians, was less important than he seems to have 
thought it, for he says that physicians unawares had 
been instructing apothecaries in their science by 
"sending them to visit their patients to give them the 
best account they could of the state of their health 
and effect of their medicines, and of late years taking 
them with them on their visits," so that during the 
plague of 1661, " most of the physicians being out of 
town" the apothecaries were enabled to "take upon 



152 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 

them the whole practice of medicine." l This would 
imply that the physicians of the period were not only 
negligent of their duty in fair times, but that they 
fled their posts in time of danger, a charge savoring 
more of dyspepsia than of truth. 

"Whatever the causes were, the encroachments were 
made and punished during the period between the 
chartering of the company and the year 1703, when 
the House of Lords finally settled it in the case of 
William Rose v. College of Physicians, that an 
apothecary might prescribe his own remedies as well 
as sell them. This case is worth considering, for it 
was the last important step in the progress of the 
apothecary toward his present status as a general 
practitioner of medicine. The facts were these : Wil- 
liam Rose being an apothecary, and John Seale, 
butcher, a sick man, the said Seale did send for the 
said Rose, who thereupon coming, did shake his head 
and look as wise as the whole Faculty, at which being 
much comforted, the thrifty butcher did ask the 
apothecary to send him something for his cure ; 
whereupon the said Rose, not taking advice of any 
physician, did send some boluses to said Seale ; charg- 
ing therefor, but not for advice. The case does not 
state the effect of the boluses, nor is it important ; for 
whether the patient was killed or cured was not 
material to the proposition of law, that it was alike 
contrary to the form of the statute for an apothecary 
to cure or kill. There does not seem to have been 
any doubt in the minds of the judges when the Col- 

1 Cited from Dr. More's Outline of Pharmacy in Ireland, in West. Rev, 
April, 1858. 



THE EVOLUTION OF THE APOTHECARY. 153 

lege of Physicians brought Rose up with a round turn 
for this his performance. The case was argued several 
times — for Rose, as the result shows, was pertinacious 
— but the court, having true legal respect for statutes, 
said, unanimously, yet with a bit of sting in the tail 
of their judgment : " The making up and compound- 
ing medicines is the business of an apothecary, but the 
judging what is proper for the cure, and advising what 
to take for the purpose is the business of a physician ; 
therefore, let the distemper be what it will, the pre- 
scribing and advising what is fit for it is the business 
of a physician, though without a fee ; but that rarely 
happens," and it was unanimously agreed that the 
practice of physic in the meaning of the statute con- 
sisted : 

" (1) In judging of the disease and its nature from 
the constitution of the patient, and many other cir- 
cumstances. 

" (2) In judging of the fittest and properest remedy 
for the disease. 

" (3) In directing or ordering the application of the 
remedy to the disease ; and that the proper business 
of an apothecary is to make and compound or prepare 
the prescriptions of the doctor pursuant to his direc- 
tions ; and it was agreed that the defendant's taking 
upon himself to send physic to a patient, as proper for 
his distemper, without taking ought for his pains, is 
plainly a taking upon himself to judge of the disease 
and fitness of remedy, as also of the executive or di- 
rectory part." l 

*3 Salk, 17; 6 Mod., 44. Contrast this with the definition of the 
modern New York case, Smith v. Lane, that makes the administration of 
drugs and medicines, or the use of instruments the sole test of medical 
practice. 



154 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 

The appeal being taken to the House of Lords, it 
was argued for Rose : l 

" That the consequences of affirming the judgment 
would be to ruin all apothecaries, for in that event 
they could not follow their calling without the license 
of a physician ; 

" That constant usage and practice shows that sell- 
ing a few lozenges or a small electuary to any person 
asking a remedy for a cold, or in other ordinary or 
common cases where the medicines had a known and 
certain effect, where no fee was taken, could not be 
deemed practice of physic ; 2 

" That such affirmance would give physicians a mo- 
nopoly of practice to the great harm of the public ; 
for it would lay a heavy tax on the nobility and gen- 
try, who, in the slightest cases and even for their com- 
mon servants, could not have medicine without con- 
sulting and feeing a member of the college ; it would 
deprive the poor of any advice ; it would be prejudi- 
cial to those suffering accident and taken sick in the 
night who send for an apothecary, who would risk the 
penalty if he applied the least remedy." 

For the college it was argued that : 

" By several orders of the college its members were 
enjoined to treat the poor gratis, and to visit them at 
their houses ; 

" That when it was observed that these orders were 
defeated partially by the high price charged by the 
apothecaries for medicine, the college erected dispen- 
saries in towns, where free patients could get medi- 
cine at one-third less than apothecary -prices ; 

"That in emergencies, not only apothecaries, but 
any one else, might relieve his neighbor, but this was 
no reason why apothecaries should practice at their 
leisure ; 

J 5 Bro. Pari. Rep., 553 (Tomlinson's ed.). 

2 Compare Apothecaries' Co. v. Nottingham, infra. 



THE EVOLUTION OF THE APOTHECARY. 155 

" That in light indispositions the patient generally 
prescribed for himself, and the apothecary might law- 
fully put up the medicine ; 

" That the most dangerous diseases begin with light 
symptoms, and the apothecary is not bred to detect 
them ; moreover, he is likely to sell his drugs plenti- 
fully, and if he makes a mistake in diagnosis, to cause 
great harm in what might have been remedied by 
proper treatment." * 

In spite of these arguments the Lords reversed the 
unanimous judgment of the Queen's Bench. How the 
vote stood does not appear, nor are the reasons from 
which the conclusion was drawn given. Whether the 
Lord Chancellor, sitting alone in solemn majesty, de- 
cided the question, or whether the lay Lords were 
affrighted at the prospect of having to employ a phy- 
sician, as well as buy physic, for their common serv- 
ants, we cannot know. What is certain is that the 
judges were reversed ; and it was from that time on 
settled in England that an apothecary may prescribe 
as well as sell his own drugs. Two questions re- 
mained open : Whether an apothecary could recover, 
in an action at law, fees for medical advice, 2 or write 
a prescription for medicine not dispensed by him. 3 

In 1815 the Apothecaries' Act (55 Geo. III., C. 194) 
and in 1825 an act (6 Geo. IY., C. 133) amendatory of 

1 The opticians of to-day argue in like manner against the oculists. 

2 A recovery may be had now for both medicine and advice ; but if the 
jury think the charge for the former sufficiently great to include a fee for 
the latter, they may so find. Toune v. Lady Gresley, 3 C. and P., 581 ; 
Handey v. Henson, 4 C. and P., no; Morgan v. Hallen, 8 Ad. and 

E., 119. 

3 This is still meat for lawyers. But it is certain that although under 
the Apothecaries' Act, an apothecary must compound a qualified physi- 
cian's prescription, he is not bound to compound one written by a fellow- 
apothecary. 



156 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 

it, were passed, revising and confirming the ancient 
charter of the company. At this time the state of 
general medical education in Great Britain was de- 
plorable. The case of Eose had established the right 
of an apothecary, with no other instruction than what 
he might have picked up in his apprenticeship behind 
the counter, to practice medicine. The powers of the 
College of Physicians appear to have been exercised 
rather too often against competent men, including 
graduates of the Scotch and Irish universities, and 
even of Oxford and Cambridge, as in Bonham's case, 
and too infrequently against veritable quacks and im- 
postors. It was no simple matter to get the license 
of the college, and yet unlawful for the best-trained 
man to practice in London without it. The physi- 
cians seem to have forgotten that a charter, such as 
theirs, has no other raison (Petre than the benefit to 
accrue to the public from the creation of a class of 
skilled medical men and the weeding out of the igno- 
rant and inept. There was a little too much of the 
spirit of trades-unionism in their enforcement of the 
law, and a too feeble pursuance of the object of their 
charter as recited in its preamble. 1 The practice of 
medicine had fallen to a very considerable extent into 
the hands of quacks and incompetent apothecaries, 
while competent men were hampered by artificial re- 

1 " Cum regii officii nostri munus arbitremur ditionis nostrae hominum 
felicitati omni ratione consulere; id autem vel imprimis fore, si improb- 
orum conatibus tempestive occuramus, apprime necessarium duximus 
improborum quoque hominum qui medicinam magro avaritiae suae causa, 
quam ullius bonae conscientiae fiducia, profitebuntur, unde rudi et cretulae 
plebi plurima oriantur, audaciam compescere," etc., of the charter of the 
Apothecary Company; the act of 3 Hen. VIII. , C. xi; cf. the revisers' 
notes to Ch. xviii. of the N. Y. Rev. Stats, 



THE EVOLUTION OF THE APOTHECARY. 157 

strictions. The company, thus freshly reorganized, 
set themselves about remedying this evil. The right 
of apothecaries to prescribe being established, the 
company licensing them now recognized that the right 
to advise implied the duty of care and wisdom in ad- 
vice to which medical training and instruction were 
prerequisites. They accordingly required candidates 
for their license to stand successfully examinations in 
chemistry, materia medica and therapeutics, botany, 
anatomy, and physiology, and the practice of medi- 
cine. The effect was that great benefit accrued from 
the act ; and this was frankly admitted by the physi- 
cians who at first disapproved of it. 1 Another effect 
of the act was to increase greatly the number of 
licentiates of Apothecaries' Hall as compared with 
the college. In the decade from 1848 to 1858, the 
year of the passage of the Medical Act, the licentiates 
of the College of Surgeons numbered 4,915, many of 
whom were, of course, apothecaries ; Apothecaries' 
Hall licensed 2,823, and the College of Physicians only 
242. These statistics appear to have opened some- 
what the eyes of the physicians, and shown them that 
the framers of their broad charter were wiser, per- 
haps, in their generation, than were they who drafted 
the by-laws. But it is a hard thing to admit errors ; 
so that the college did not entirely relax its old rules 
to meet the new crisis; but in 1860, two years after 

1 Thus Sir Henry Halford testified before a Parliamentary committee : 
" I must do the apothecaries the justice to say that they have executed 
that act extremely well, and that the character of that branch of the pro- 
fession has been amazingly raised since they have had that authority. I 
only do them justice when I state that, though I was very much against 
it in the first instance." Cited in West. Rev. April, 1858. 



158 CHEISTIAN SCIEKCE. 

the passage of the Medical Act, while still preserving 
in the by-laws the provisions prohibiting membership 
or fellowship in the college to any one engaged in 
trade, or the practice of physic or surgery in partner- 
ship, or engaging to share profits on medicines with a 
chemist or other person, they nevertheless resolved to 
license a class of persons privileged to compound and 
dispense medicine in their own practice. Thereupon 
the apothecaries, who had come to believe themselves 
alone entitled to this privilege, filed an information 
and bill by the Attorney-General L against the college, 
praying that defendants should be restrained from 
thus amending their by-laws and granting such li- 
censes. Mr. Koundell Palmer and others represented 
the college, and the case coming on in April, 1861, 
Wood, V. C, in an exhaustive opinion, sustained the 
right of the college under their charter to grant li- 
censes in the entire field of physic. 

We have thus seen the English apothecary not only 
evolve from a grocer into a general practitioner, but 
even acquire the assurance to attempt the curtailment 
of the chartered rights of the physicians. But it is not 
to be supposed that the apothecary, in our sense of 
the word, that is to say, the chemist and druggist, or, 
to use the English statutory term, the pharmaceutical 
chemist, 2 is entitled to prescribe his drugs in England. 
The contrary has been held in two very recent prose- 
cutions brought by the Apothecaries' Company con- 
tending that what was very good reasoning in 1703 to 
establish the right of Apothecary Eose to prescribe, 

1 Attorney-General v. Royal College of Physicians. L. J., N. S., Ch. 

3°> 757- 

2 It is well settled in New York that an apothecary or druggist cannot 

prescribe without a physician's license. 



THE EVOLUTION OF THE APOTHECARY. 159 

was very poor logic in our day when applied to 
Chemists Nottingham and Harrison. These two cases 
show very clearly the law applicable to counter-pre- 
scribing, as it has always been laid down by the law 
courts, on both sides of the Atlantic. They merit, 
therefore, full exposition. 

In the Apothecaries' Company v. Nottingham, 1 
tried in January 27, 1876, before Baron Bramwell, it 
appeared that the defendant, although only a chemist 
himself, was in partnership with a medical practitioner 
duly qualified, to whom he always referred such pa- 
tients as in his opinion were seriously ill. It did not 
appear that he ever left his shop to prescribe, but it 
was admitted that he was in the habit of giving ad- 
vice over the counter in what he considered trivial 
cases. In charging the jury the learned Baron said : 
" You have to find a true verdict on the evidence, vihether 
you like the act or not? Perhaps you may think that 
a person has a right to practice as he likes, whether 
qualified or not ; or, on the other hand, you may think 
that, whereas the poorer classes have no opportunity 
of judging of or of ascertaining the qualifications of 
the persons to whom they resort for medical advice, 
the legislature should require such persons to possess 
proper skill and knowledge, and to obtain a certificate 
thereof. No doubt some people like to go to unquali- 
fied practitioners so as to get advice cheap ; but there 
is the law, and we have to observe it. If you think 
this man has ' acted or practiced as an apothecary, 5 

134L. T. R., N. s.,76. 

2 Our italics. There are similar New York cases affecting persons 
practicing medicine under the guise of selling drugs. 



160 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 

then you must find your verdict for the plaintiff. In- 
deed, I feel some little difficulty in putting the case to 
you, for on the defendant's own admission he says he 
prescribed, and that if a person brought a child to him 
suffering from, say diarrhoea, and asked what was 
good for it, he gave the medicine ; if, however, the 
case was serious, he sent the doctor. Surely that is 
acting and practicing as an apothecary within the 
meaning of the act ? " 1 Still more recently, in July, 
1879, this whole subject was carefully and learnedly 
considered by Judge Matteran, Q. C, in the case of 
the Apothecaries' Company v. Harrison. 2 The facts 
proved were that Julia Caddick went to the shop of 
defendant, a chemist, said she was suffering from 
weakness, and asked for something to relieve her. 
Defendant asked the cause of her weakness ; she an- 
swered that it was left on her after confinement. He 
felt her pulse, looked at her tongue, and asked her to 
describe how she felt. She did so. He made up a 
medicine and charged only one shilling. Defendant's 
council urged in his behalf every argument brought 
forward for Eose, whose case, as we have seen, settled 
the right of the apothecaries to prescribe. He also 
tried to distinguish the chemist from the apothecary, 
by the criterion that the former could only practice in 
the shop, while the latter might visit ; but the court 
said that the apothecary's right to visit was not clear 
as a legal proposition. Judgment was given for the 
company plaintiff, and the judge, citing the opinions 

1 See Mr. Justice Creswell's distinction between chemists, surgeons, and 
apothecaries, in Apoth. Co. v. Lotinga, 2 M. and R., 500. 
267L.T., 232, 



THE EVOLUTION OF THE APOTHECARY. 161 

of Bramwell and Creswell, supra, concluded his own 
opinion with these words, the applicability of which 
in this State and County is obvious to one familiar 
with their law and charities : 

" I cannot, however, close this judgment without ex- 
pressing my conviction that the act was intended 
(which intention has, I think, been successfully carried 
out) to have a beneficial action on the poorer classes. 
The more scientific masters of medicine being other- 
wise engaged, have no time to compound and dispense 
their own prescriptions ; these, therefore, to save more 
valuable labor, are relegated to the chemists and drug- 
gists, who, if not a less highly educated class, are at 
least a class who have not passed the necessary exami- 
nation to entitle them to practice as apothecaries. 
Now if the chemists were permitted to advise on the 
ailments of the poor, as well as to make up their drugs 
into medicines, the sick poor would lack the benefit of 
that highest class of skill which the rich by their 
purses can command. But this want has been pro- 
vided for the necessitous at our public hospitals and 
dispensaries, where the ablest physicians, surgeons, 
and apothecaries in the land generously give their time 
and best skill to all comers, on whom not only sick- 
ness but poverty is pressing. The counsel for the de- 
fendant argued that the poor would suffer by limiting 
the action of the druggist according to the express 
language of the act ; but to this argument the best an- 
swer is given by the act itself, which protects, benefits, 
and furthers the highest interests of the sick poor, by 
pointing and directing them to our public medical in- 
stitutions for advice with reference to their ailments, 
and to the chemists for their medicines, when such 
are required, and are not provided for by those noble 
and charitable institutions." 

Here, then, we leave for the moment our apothe- 



162 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 

cary. Having triumphantly established, within less 
than a hundred years from his abandonment of the 
grocer, his own right to practice medicine, and having 
as triumphantly blocked, for nearly two hundred 
years, encroachments, exactly similar to his own, by 
the chemist, we have seen him, within the last twenty- 
five years, lay violent hands upon the venerable col- 
lege whose members gave him his first start in life as 
a tradesman of a distinct sort ; and we have seen him 
beaten in this assault, planned in the interest of his 
corporation as a trades-union, and not as the dutiful 
public servant that every corporation should be. 

The apothecary's history is profitable for instruc- 
tion. Not its least obvious lesson is that so long as 
the laws affecting the practice of medicine and the 
incorporation of medical societies are exercised, in pur- 
suance of their ostensible object — i.e., the furthering 
of the public welfare by requiring of practitioners con- 
formity to a reasonable standard of professional at- 
tainment, those laws can be enforced ; but that, when- 
ever such legislation is attempted to be exercised in a 
selfish spirit of trades-unionism, for the benefit of 
corporations and their members, and in disregard of 
the public needs and convenience, the same laws will 
be nullified by close technical constructions, and if not 
repealed will fall into "innocuous desuetude." The 
medical profession in this country has been free, 
fortunately, from those arbitrary limitations which en- 
abled the untrained apothecary partially to supplant 
the physician in England, by making it unprofessional 
for the latter to engage in the practice of medicine to the 
full extent authorized by the charter of the college grant- 



THE EVOLUTION OF THE APOTHECAKY. 163 

ing his license. And there seems to be no adequate 
reason why the apothecary with us should be suffered 
to prescribe chalk-mixtures for "light cases of diar- 
rhoea," bromides for " nervousness," and so forth. A 
judge in New York City said some time ago that the 
court would take judicial notice of the fact that a lawyer 
could be found in half an hour for any client. And 
what with hospitals, infirmaries, dispensaries, night 
medical service, and about twice as many well- 
equipped physicians as lawyers in our cities, there is 
certainly no crying need for laymen to render medical 
assistance except in cases of emergency. 1 

1 Such has been the spread of the hospital and dispensary system in New 
York City of late years that many physicians have banded together to 
correct what they allege is its abuse in furnishing free medical treatment 
not to the poor only, but to those in moderate circumstances and even to 
the rich. Some of these allegations if well founded are certainly startling. 



I 






Appendix A. 



THE CLAIMS OF CHKISTIAN SCIENCE, 1 

AS MADE BY ONE OF ITS EXP0UNDEKS AND AC- 
CEPTED BY A JUDGE. 

To the Editor of the Sun : 

Sir : — Last Sunday afternoon Mr. Carol Norton lec- 
tured upon Christian Science at the Metropolitan Opera 
House. The building was thronged and the audience 
fairly representative of the average intelligence and 
education of this city. Although many present were 
doubtless led thither by curiosity, a very large num- 
ber, perhaps the majority, were honest believers in 
the pretensions of Mrs. Eddy. 

Mr. Justice Norton 2 of Allegheny introduced the 
lecturer as one of the foremost teachers of the new re- 
ligion, as he undoubtedly is, and warmly upheld the 
citizen's constitutional right to entertain any religious 
belief, a right that it would be foolish for any one to 
assail. 

Unfortunately, no one alluded to that valid objec- 
tion to Christian Science which would have com- 
mended itself to so intelligent an audience, and may 
be thus briefly stated : Mrs. Eddy and her adherents 

1 From the New York Sun, June 9, 1899. 

2 Judge Norton is not, as would seem from this title, a justice of the 
Supreme Court, although thus entitled by other speakers at the meeting. 
He is a county judge. 

165 



166 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 

pretend that without the use of those remedies or ap- 
pliances shown by universal experience to be certainly, 
probably or possibly adequate to relieve or cure sick- 
ness and wounds, they can by vague mental processes 
alone effect cures where medical aid is unavailing. 
They even pretend that the mere reading of her book 
cures all human infirmities, even cancer. If honest in 
their belief, these people are willing to put, and do 
put, all medical and surgical aid aside, substituting 
therefor mental processes. If they have not this 
willingness, they are dishonest according to their own 
pretensions. If, on the other hand, they thrust aside 
scientific aid, demonstrably adequate to save life, and 
substitute therefor a treatment under which death 
results, they are certainly guilty of homicide in some 
degree, and this practice is dangerous to the public 
health. From this dilemma there is no escape. It is 
worth while, therefore, to ask every thoughtful and 
candid person who has listened to or read the words 
of Mr. Norton, Mrs. Eddy's foremost apostle, to 
ponder carefully the manner in which that gentleman, 
upon whom no imputation is cast, answers inquiries 
that he himself solicits. Let him and his teacher be 
judged, in all fairness, by their own words. 

Mr. Norton offered medical proof that Christian 
Science has cured locomotor ataxia, cancer and many 
other diseases. This offer is not new. Mr, Norton 
copyrighted a lecture in 1898, which he has been 
delivering since with more or less variation. It was 
printed in full by the Troy Becord of February 28, 
1899. On March 30, I wrote to him, apropos of that 
publication, as follows ; 



THE CLAIMS OF CHRISTIAN SCIEKCE. 167 

A copy of your lecture . . . has been sent to 
me. You therein say that " regular medical confir- 
mation of cases two, three, four, five and eight will be 
furnished any honest skeptic." I am certainly a 
skeptic, and, if I may say so, an honest one, and I 
should be very much obliged to you if you will give 
the names and addresses of reputable and competent 
medical practitioners who will certify to the second 
case, the cure of an incurable cancer ; the third case, 
the cure of a child suffering from epileptic fits from 
birth, and having forty spasms a day at the commence- 
ment of treatment ; the fourth case, a cure of " con- 
sumption of the lungs in the second stage of that dis- 
ease ; " the fifth case, a cure of a patient ill with 
typhoid fever in Paris and treated by a practitioner 
in New York; the eighth case, the cure of a lady 
forty years old unsuccessfully treated for thirty-five 
years for " organic valvular diseases of the heart" by 
physicians who pronounced the disease incurable. I 
should like to know what persons made the diagnoses 
in these cases, the course of treatment followed, the 
method taken to exclude in the cure other factors 
than treatment by Christian Science, and the present 
condition of the person cured. 

Mr. Norton replied courteously on April 3, promis- 
ing the information. On April 18, politely explain- 
ing his delay upon the ground of many engagements, 
he wrote : " I will have the positive proof of my ut- 
terances in the lecture that you read in the Troy 
Record properly prepared for a lawyer's gaze within 
a few days." On April 29, reminding Mr. Norton 
that a month had elapsed since my request, I wrote : 

"With the desire to be entirely fair in discussing 
the theories of Mrs. Eddy and yourself I beg now to 
ask that you kindly give me an early reply to the fol- 
lowing questions for immediate use : 



168 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 

"First — If Christian Science, as you say in your 
Saratoga lecture of August 26, 1898, ' removes the 
possibility of human and personal contention,' why 
has Mrs. Eddy had so much contention concerning the 
late P. P. Quimby and the copyright of her book that 
she has threatened legal proceedings, and, I under- 
stand, actually resorted to the courts ? 

" Second — If ' matter ' is only erroneous thought in 
'mortal mind,' and, therefore, non-existent in mind 
illuminated by the right thought of Christian Science, 
and if the material aids to the injured of drugs, band- 
ages, splints, etc., are unnecessary and even harmful 
for the proper treatment of physical injuries, will you 
kindly tell me what course you or Mrs. Eddy would 
adopt in any of the following cases : 

" (a) Walking along the street, a brick falls from 
above and cuts your head, causing blood to flow ? 

" (b) A child at table swallows a fishbone and is in 
peril of strangulation ? 

" (c) Your child is riding in a street car and a per- 
son with confluent smallpox sits down beside it? 

"(d) A child in the street is run down by a cable 
car and bleeds from a severed artery ? 

" (e) A baby falls from a window and fractures its 
skull ? " 

On May 4, Mr. Norton civilly replied, kindly prom- 
ising to call upon me on May 8, with the promised 
medical confirmation, and, as to the foregoing ques- 
tions, said: "The questions in your letter of April 29, 
I will be obliged to shelve for the present, 1 desiring to 
do one thing at a time. I think you will agree with 
me that neither of us could expect to master the ideas 
of Mr. Spencer or Mr. Darwin in a hurried or impetu- 
ous way, no matter how honest our purpose." 

Upon May 8, Mr. Norton did me the honor of call- 

1 The italics are mine. — W. A. P. 



THE CLAIMS OF CHKISTIAJST SCIENCE. 169 

ing with the promised " medical confirmation," which 
consisted in each case of a brief statement of conclu- 
sions signed by a Christian Scientist. Of these sign- 
ers one was said to have studied in a homeopathic, 
and another in a regular medical college. No facts 
were set forth upon which the conclusions were based, 
no names were connected with the certificates that 
would carry any weight with the general medical 
profession or any body of trained investigators. Nor 
would the evidence have been admissible in Judge 
Norton's court. It is not meant by this to cast 
the least reflection upon the honesty, sincerity and 
good repute of the signers. Doubtless they are ex- 
cellent persons, but their names are unknown in the 
field of accurate investigation. In a very pleasant and 
good-tempered conversation, Mr. Norton referred to 
this actual case mentioned in my letter of April 28 : 
A mother affected with Christian Science, but not 
to the point of infanticide, called a physician to see 
her child sick from eating stone-fruit. " Doctor," she 
said, " I really do not know whether the stone is in 
the child or in my mind." " Madame," he replied, " I 
cannot undertake to prescribe for a stone in your 
mind, but I can manage one in the boy." And this 
he did very successfully with castor oil. Of this ma- 
terial thought Mr. Norton, in flat contradiction of 
Mrs. Eddy (" Science and Health," pp. 158, 159, edi- 
tion of 1887), said : " How silly ! Of course, the stone 
was in the boy. But there are fools among Christian 
Scientists as well as among other classes." It was a 
proposition upon which Ave unexpectedly found our- 
selves in entire accord. He was understood also dis- 



170 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 

tinctly to say that Christian Scientists made differ- 
ential diagnoses, and would presume in the case of a 
severed artery to put aside a surgeon and substitute 
for his their own treatment. But in order that no 
misapprehensions might arise on this score a letter 
was written on the following day to his secretary, 
saying : 

I understood Mr. Norton yesterday to say that 
Christian Scientists both make and accept differential 
diagnoses of disease ; that if a patient came to him 
complaining of a sore, he would make diagnosis to de- 
termine whether it was cancer, abscess, ulcer, carbun- 
cle, boil, or what not ; and so with diseases he would 
make diagnosis between pneumonia, fever, appendi- 
citis, etc. I further understood him distinctly to say 
that if the clerk in my outer office should accidentally 
sever an artery and there were a surgeon present with 
adequate surgical appliances to stanch the flow of 
blood, he, Mr. Norton, would assume the responsibility 
of checking that arterial gush by the mental processes 
of Christian Science, and would dispense with the 
surgeon's aid and appliances. To my mind these are 
very startling propositions, and I wish, in justice to 
Mr. Norton and the cause he represents, to be entirely 
sure that I apprehend him rightly, and I shall be 
obliged to him or to you for a prompt reply on these 
points. And I should also be glad to have replies to 
the questions that I last submitted to Mr. Norton in 
writing as to what he would himself do in the case of 
certain accidents occurring in his presence, such as 
the fracture of the skull by a falling brick, the sever- 
ing of a leg by a cable car, etc. 

To this Mr. Norton himself replied thus on May 29, 
the italics being his : 

You most thoroughly misunderstood me in relation 



THE CLAIMS OF CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 171 

to what I said about deferential l diagnosis of disease. 
I make no diagnosis except along the lines of consist- 
ent mental therapeutics. An expert in mental thera- 
peutics will naturally know the character of this diag- 
nosis. Discord is discord. Pain is pain. Disease is 
disease. The principle that cures one, if rightly ap- 
plied, will cure all. This is the beginning and end of 
rational mental healing. In relation to mental treat- 
ment for a severed artery, I said simply that I be- 
lieved the proper application of mind power would do 
the same work, if not better than any other method. 
I beg that you quote me correctly, if you ever quote 
me, and I most thoroughly disagree with the under- 
standing you got about diagnosis. In reply to the 
list of questions that you wrote to me in a recent let- 
ter, I have but to repeat my recent utterances in a 
letter to you, that I prefer to shelve them, 2 because to 
answer them would bring about wholly indifferent re- 
sults. 

Space forbids the publication of all the letters 
verbatim, nor is that necessary. Mr. Norton has 
been accurately quoted upon the point at issue. Every 
one can decide for himself whether the questions were 
fairly put and fairly answered. The learned Judge 
who presided at Sunday's meeting should be eminently 
competent to decide whether Mr. Norton would be 
guilty of manslaughter under this hypothetical state 
of facts : A child is bleeding to death from a severed 
artery. A surgeon at hand with ligatures and all 
proper appliances is demonstrably able to stop the flow 
of blood. Mr. Norton thrusts him aside, saying: 
"Here is only an error of mortal mind. My revered 
mother, Mrs. Eddy, teaches, on pp. 158 and 159 of 

i Sic. 2 These italics are mine.— W. A. P, 



172 CHEISTIAN SCIENCE. 

' Science and Health,' thus : ' Mind can regulate the 
condition of the stomach, bowels, food, temperature of 
your child, far better than matter can do so. Your 
child can have worms if you say so, or whatever 
malady is timorously holden in your mind relative to 
the body.' And at page 183 she says : ' Anatomy, 
physiology, treatises on health — sustained by what is 
called material law — are the husbandmen of sickness 
and disease.' Accordingly, dismiss the surgeon while 
I apply mind power. If I do it properly I will do the 
same work, if not better than the surgeon." The 
child dies. Would Judge Norton's belief in liberty 
of conscience, which no sensible person wishes to 
curtail, lead him to instruct a jury that a person 
thus suffering a little child to bleed to death and 
thrusting aside the aid that would have saved life is 
guiltless of manslaughter ? 

If it be said that Christian Scientists w T ould not 
attempt to treat such a case, it is admitted that the 
whole solemn preachment of Mrs. Eddy, Mr. Norton 
and their fellows is nonsense, a humbug, a snare and a 
delusion; that their alleged cures are due not to any 
peculiar virtue of Christian Science, but to that action 
upon the body of the mind in a certain class of cases 
that has been known and acted upon both by phy- 
sicians and intelligent laymen since before the time of 
Heraclitus : that operates for the voudoo priestess as 
well as for Mrs. Eddy. 

If it is depressing to see an intelligent audience 
listening seriously to such teaching, it is equally 
regrettable that a member of the Court should pre- 
side at such a meeting, when it is considered that 



THE CLAIMS OF CHKISTIAN SCIENCE. 173 

cases may come before him involving violations of 
the law — whether by homicide or failure to report 
births, deaths and contagious diseases — under cover of 
theories which he publicly defends, apparently, as 
reducible with safety to common practice. Surely 
this learned Judge knows that in the Mormon cases 
the United States Supreme Court lucidly pointed out 
the wide distinction between religious liberty and 
license to commit, in the name of religion, acts for- 
bidden by the law of the land enacted within the 
scope of the police power. 

W. A. Pttkkington. 

New York, May 2g t 



Appendix B. 



CHKISTIAN SCIENCE AND THE LAW. 1 

To the Editor of the Sun : 

Sir : — In a recent editorial quoting a number of the 
excerpts from Mrs. Eddy's book lately appearing in the 
reviews systematic effort was urged " to ferret out and 
punish " Christian Scientists. The editorial omitted, 
however, to show the state of the law and the diffi- 
culties in the way of following its advice. It would 
be unfortunate if the adverse sentiment toward Eddy- 
ism aroused by exposure of its methods and the nu- 
merous reported cases of its manslaughters should be 
perverted or lessened by ill-considered action ; it seems, 
therefore, worth while to make the situation clear. 

No medical law of any State enjoins or prohibits 
any system of medical practice. No law forbidding 
the practice of Christian Science or any other system 
of treating the sick, no matter how foolish, has been 
proposed. Those who assert the contrary do so igno- 
rantly or with intent to mislead. What medical laws 
require, and in the opinion of the Supreme Court of 
the nation and of almost every State properly require, 
is that no person shall practice medicine before he has 
pursued a proper course of study and furnished some 
evidence that he has a fair knowledge of the human 

1 New York Sun, July 12, 1899. 

175 



176 CHEISTIAIST SCIENCE. 

economy and the sciences relating thereto. This reg- 
ulation applies to Roman Catholics, Protestants and 
Jews. It is objected to by Christian Scientists and 
Spiritualists, who stoutly maintain that to require the 
same education of them as of others engaging in the 
same business is to infringe their liberty of conscience 
and right to worship in their own way, although it 
is undeniable that when a man has once obtained a 
license to practice medicine upon proof of his scien- 
tific attainments he may follow any system he chooses. 
He may, if he see fit, rely solely upon mental proc- 
esses. Every physician does largely take into account 
and rely upon the effect of the mind upon the body, 
especially in certain classes of cases. There are few 
to-day who pretend that the high potencies of home- 
opathy have any medicinal action, and it was a realiza- 
tion that their effect was due to the patient's imagina- 
tion that led Mrs. Eddy, as she says, into her own 
extraordinary system. But homeopathists admit the 
existence of disease. They often administer drugs as 
heroically as regular practitioners — sometimes more 
heroically. They use surgery skilfully. In fact, it 
is often difficult to differentiate them from regular 
physicians by their practice alone ; nor was there ever 
a time when they did not claim to be called physi- 
cians. The Eddyites, on the other hand, although 
eager to dub themselves "doctors of Christian Sci- 
ence," declare that they are not practitioners of medi- 
cine. Mrs. Eddy, as was fully pointed out in the 
North American Review for March, condemns not 
only drugs, remedies and instruments, but even hy- 
giene, exercise and bathing. Her method of curing 



x 



CHRISTIAN SCIENCE AND THE LAW. 177 

disease is first to deny its existence and then to argue 
with it as one would argue with a Congressman. 
Herein lies at once the danger of her crazy method 
and the immunity of its practitioners from punish- 
ment under the law of this and many other States. 
A druggist who prescribes a proprietary nostrum or 
so simple a remedy as rhubarb or chalk mixture may 
be convicted of a misdemeanor. Our Supreme Court 
has so held in several cases. But it also has laid 
down in Smith v. Lane (24 Hun., 632) the narrow 
rule that the use of drugs, medicines or instruments is 
an essential element of medical practice, holding, in 
substance, that the medical law was intended only to 
protect those seeking treatment secundum artem from 
false pretenders to skill in the use of dangerous drugs 
or instruments, but not to protect from their mistake 
or folly, persons who, lured by wonderful promises of 
cure, submit themselves to the treatment of those 
avowedly discarding ordinary medical methods. 

This case, expressly approved of in Ohio, Rhode 
Island and perhaps other States, is the joy and bul- 
wark of Christian Scientists. It was held to be in- 
applicable under the Nebraska and Illinois statutes ; 
but from the last Legislature of the latter State the 
Eddyites are said to have secured a proviso in the 
new medical law adopting its rule. 

It will be remembered that a letter in The Sun of 
June 9, the accuracy of which has not been denied 
to my knowledge, showed that when Mr. Carol Norton, 
Mrs. Eddy's apostle hereabouts, was asked if he would 
dare to exclude medical aid and treat severed arteries, 
fractures, strangulations and contagious diseases by 



178 CHKISTIAN SCIENCE. 

mental processes he twice wrote that he preferred 
to shelve the questions. It must seem startling to a 
layman that a druggist violates the medical law by 
prescribing rhubarb, while a Christian Scientist who 
" thinks at " the severed artery of a child is exempt 
from the operations of that statute. And perhaps it 
may seem easy to rectify the anomaly by legislation. 
Two recent experiments in this direction may be 
profitable for instruction. 

In 1898 a bill was introduced into the Massachusetts 
Legislature defining the term " practicing medicine " 
so as to include all methods of treating the sick and 
wounded for hire, including, of course, Christian Sci- 
entists and every sort of " healer." As was naturally 
to be expected, Mr. William Lloyd Garrison and Prof. 
James — the latter of whom seems bent upon forcing 
Harvard, ancient mother of scholars and conservative 
men, to associate, in the public mind, with Mesdames 
Eddy and Piper — lifted up their voices against the 
bill. These gentlemen represent the best of the host 
that rally to Mrs. Eddy's support ; sincere, educated, 
intelligent, dearly loving to run a tilt with the ma- 
jority, with Athenian fondness for new things and not 
unwilling to fill the trump of Fame. Mr. Garrison, 
therefore, who a short time ago — I think it is the same 
Mr. Garrison — clamored at the top of his pen for aca- 
demic rules to prevent the ingenuous youth of Har- 
vard from inflicting or submitting to the cautery of a 
boyish and rather silly initiation of a secret society — 
Mr. Garrison, who has harrowed all our feelings by 
pointing out the awful brutality of football, actually 
obstructed the passage of the law requiring Christian 



• CHKISTIAN SCIENCE AND THE LAW. 179 

Scientists in Massachusetts to have as a condition of 
treating the sick the same education required of Prot- 
estants, Catholics and Jews engaged in the same 
business. And what was his delightful argument? 
As reported by the Christian Scientists, it seems to 
have consisted of two main premises : First, " John 
P. Eobinson, he, said they didn't know everything 
down in Judee," or, in common English, u the physi- 
cians don't know it all : therefore let all the ignorant 
have free field." Second, homeopathy was formerly 
ridiculed. The answer seems simple enough. Mr. 
Robinson, whose dictum has been much overworked, 
was right. In medical science we know a good deal 
more than was known in Judee. Moreover, Mr. 
Garrison himself doesn't practice all theories ema- 
nating from that district. He may surpass the rest of 
us, but it may be doubted whether he gives to every 
one that asks of him or turns away from none who 
would borrow of him ; and as for resisting what he 
considers evil he has a perfect mania for it, using the 
sonnet with deadly effect. It is true that the meta- 
physical theory of Hahnemann that a drug has me- 
dicinal properties when attenuated to a degree repre- 
sented by figures that overwhelm the imagination, 
and that such properties are further affected by the 
number and direction of the shakes given to the phial 
containing the potency, was ridiculed, and very justly 
so, as appears from the fact that few homeopathists 
of to-day profess the theory, and fewer, if any, prac- 
tice it, except, perhaps, as a form of mind cure. Prof. 
James was not less convincing than Mr. Garrison. 
With neat appreciation of the proprieties he pro- 



180 CHEISTIAIST SCIENCE. 

claimed his professorship at Harvard, thereby drag- 
ging a reputable mother's name into company where 
most of her offspring would blush to see her. Next 
he took the bold, broad, not to say bad, ground that 
the State should not regulate medicine at all, because 
it is not a " finished science." This is the most de- 
licious tid-bit of logic yet offered. If we are to legis- 
late only about " finished sciences " our statute books 
w T ill soon be made up of enactments that straight lines 
shall be the shortest distances between points, and 
that it shall be a misdemeanor for the square de- 
scribed on the hypothenuse to exceed the sum of the 
squares described on the other two sides. 

In the same year Senator Coggeshall introduced 
into the New York Legislature, at whose instance I 
do not know, a bill that would have affected Christian 
Scientists. At its hearing in committee so many 
Eddyites, most of them in skirts, were present that 
adjournment was had to the Senate chamber. Ap- 
parently no one spoke for the bill and no one of note 
against it. After the usual platitudes concerning 
liberty and the customary depreciation of medicine as 
an unfinished science, the Senator is reported to have 
smiled, bowed to the ladies, and abandoned the bant- 
ling upon Mrs. Eddy's doorstep as cheerfully as he 
took it from its parent, whoever that may have been. 
It was another instance of an enthusiastic and organ- 
ized few carrying their point, while the unorganized 
multitude was indifferent and apathetic. It seems 
obvious, therefore, that attempts at legislation in this 
matter should not be made ill-advisedly or without 
due organization. 



CHRISTIAN SCIENCE AND THE LAW. 181 

But does it follow that we are without remedy- 
under existing law? It would seem not. If it can 
be demonstrated that a Christian Scientist has caused 
death by excluding proper medical or surgical treat- 
ment and substituting his mental processes — in such 
cases, for instance, as those submitted to Mr. Norton 
and " shelved " by him — it ought not to be difficult to 
obtain a conviction of manslaughter, if not of murder. 
The societies for prevention of cruelty to children can 
act in the premises. English courts are extraordi- 
narily lenient with fanatics, but although Wagstaflfe 
escaped punishment prior to the enactment of the 
Prevention of Cruelty to Children statute, that law 
seems to have been passed in consequence of his ac- 
quittal; and recently another member of the "Pe- 
culiar People," whose child died under a similar treat- 
ment by anointing with oil in Apostolic fashion, was 
convicted of manslaughter. If memory serves, Mr. 
Gerry, some years ago, took from a missionary a 
child whose fractured arm the father was treating 
solely by such anointing ; and the Bishop forbade the 
parent to go back to his post. There is no reason 
why Christian Scientists should not be compelled to 
report births, deaths and contagious diseases under 
the usual penalties for disobedience. If they say that 
it is wrong to compel them, who do not believe in 
disease, to report its existence, once more the answer 
is simple: Mrs. Eddy herself has reported in print 
that her first husband, Col. Glover, died of "yellow 
fever," that " insidious disease." 

But after all, that which will destroy Christian 
Science is the true exposition in the reviews and daily 



182 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 

press of its absurdities, its vulgarities, its false pre- 
tences as well as its dangers. It does not seem possible 
that a sane or reverent mind or one with any sense of 
humor could accept seriously the preachment of the 
exceedingly shrewd, but very ignorant and ungram- 
matical old lady, once of Lynn but now of Concord. 
And it is safe to say that unless Christian Scientists 
can win some temporary advantage by cheap martyr- 
dom the time will come very soon when sane and 
reputable persons, many of whom now accept the 
doctrine ignorantly, will blush with shame to think 
they ever could have been disciples of Mary Moss 
Baker Glover Patterson Eddy, whose name seems to 
be legion. "W. A. Purrington. 

July jo. 



Index. 



Absent Treatment, 22, 30 11 , 
101. 

Advertising, methods, (see Mrs. 
Eddy). 

^Esop's fable, ass and lion's 
skin, 97. 

Agamo-genesis, possible in " Sci- 
ence," 47. 

Agathon's dinner, 23. 

Agnosticism, confounded with 
gnosticism, 42. 

Anatomy, study of condemned, 
25, 47; a cause of disease, 
172. 

Anecdotes, of Bishop and Luna- 
tic, 63; of Faith Cure, 38. 

Animal 'Magnetism , condemned, 
2 3» 47 > 58, (see Cerberus). 

Anti-diploma Law of Massa- 
chusetts, 51. 

Apothecary, meaning of, 145; 
and grocer, 146; originally 
dispenser not prescriber, 
147, 148, 151; wins right to 
prescribe, 132, 151 to 155; 
in America, 158 n \ 163; in 
England, 160; English 
apothecaries act, 155; ex- 
aminations, 157; try to en- 
join college of physicians 
from licensing general 
practitioners, 158; differs 
from chemist, 158; contrast 
between his legal liability 



l and that of a "Scientist," 

178. 
Argument against Christian 
Science, remedy for dis- 
eases, 21, 22; summed up, 

Aristophanes ridicules harmony 

cure, 23. 
Artery, Christian Science tested 

by, 65, 67, (see Norton). 
Astrologer, consulted when in 

prison, 88. 

B 

Babies, daily ablution of, 24, 

(see Children). 
Baker, maiden name of Mrs. 

Eddy, 40. 
Barbers, ancient surgeons, 149. 
Bates, General Erastus N., 52, 

58. 

Bathing, condemned, 24. 
Baunscheidtismus, death from, 

75- 
Bayard, last strict Hahneman- 

nist in N. Y., 94. 

Bentham on legislation, 128. 

Bequests of Christian Science, 
costly and martial, 59. 

Berkeley, Bishop, tar-water the- 
ory, 13; almost discovered 
Christian Science, 18. 

Bible, (see Scriptures). 

Bishop, anecdote of lunatic 
and, 63. 



183 



184 



INDEX. 



Boards of Exa?niners, (see Med- 
ical Examiners). 

Boastfulness, badge of charla- 
tan, II, (see Mrs. Eddy). 

Body, evolved from mortal 
mind, 21; not to be cared 
for, 24; seedling that starts 
thought, 21. 

Botanical School, Thomson's, 

Browning, Robert, poetry com- 
pared with Mrs. Eddy's, 
59 > 60. 

Buchanan s, College, compared 
with Mrs. Eddy's, 54. 

Bunions may be insanity, 21. 



C. S. D., symbolic letters, 55; 
first displayed by Mrs. 
Eddy, 45. 

Cabbage, eaten heartily by a 
baby under Mrs. Eddy's 
care, 27. 

Cadi, judgment of a, 25, no, 
in. 

Cagliostro, 67, 91; offer to swal- 
low poison, 45 n . 

Cancer, cured by Mrs. Eddy in 
one visit, 27; by merely 
reading her book, 17, 166; 
Mr. Norton's statement as 
to, 167. 

" Catnip and Christ, 1 ' Mrs. 
Eddy's profane compari- 
son, 58. 

Cerberus, devours Delilah's vic- 
tims, 58. 

Certificates, Mrs. Eddy's, 27; 
evidence of their fabrica- 
tion, 6o n , (see Mrs. Eddy's 
advertising methods, 
Death). 

Charlatanism, 1 1 ; homicide 
and, 127. 



Charter, (see College, Mrs. 
Eddy). 

Chemist, English equivalent of 
American apothecary, 158. 

Childbirth, normal operation of 
function, not disease, 66, , 
120 ; danger of Christian 
Science in, 67. 

Children, cured of bowel com- 
plaint, 27; "dumpishness," 
61; hayfever and rupture, 
30 11 ; diseases of, due to ma- 
ternal ideas, 25, 169, 171; 
danger to, of Eddyism, 25, 
26, 37, 169, 171; medical 
neglect of, 26, 87, 88, (see 
Peculiar People); exposure 
of to contagion, 26, 65, 103, 
120; not amenable to force 
of suggestion, 103; inflam- 
mation of eyes, to be report- 
ed, 108; severed artery, 64: 
104; 113; 168; protection 
from cruelty, 181, (see Nor- 
ton). 

Christ, corner-stone of Mrs. Ed- 
dy's church, 41; and catnip, 
58 ; less than Christianity , 18. 

Christianity, larger than its 
founder, 18. 

Christian Science, alleged cures 
due to suggestion, etc., 66, 
101 ; no peculiar efficacy in, 
64; basis of Mrs. Eddy's 
church, 41; causes of suc- 
cess, 18, 19, 66 ; condemns 
all other systems, 24; dan- 
ger of, 23, 29, 37, 177; de- 
stroys Mrs. Eddy's edu- 
cation, 42; differs from 
homeopathy and eclecti- 
cism, 117; discovery of, 17, 
48, 49; "hopelessly origi- 
nal," 47; inefficacious and 
sham in surgical cases, 28, 
64, 101, 171; only means 
of cure, 23, 24; originated 



INDEX 



185 



in homeopathic idea, 16, 
loo; practice of should not 
be absolutely forbidden, 34, 
115,180; pretences summed 
up, 166; publicity will de- 
stroy, 36, 98, 182; suc- 
cess dependent on fees, 56; 
therapeutic methods, 21,82, 
84, 101; unimportant as a 
religious or metaphysical 
theory, 22, 63, 100, 102, 
(see Manslaughter, Medical 
Boards, Mrs. Eddy). 

Christian Scientists, disingenu- 
ous, of 104 ; liability of for 
malpractice, 32, 33, 109, 
114, 181 , (see manslaugh- 
ter); reports of contagious 
disease and death by, 86, 
108, 120, 181; held to be 
or not to be practitioners of 
medicine according to law 
of the particular jurisdic- 
tion, 31, 79 seq., (see cita- 
tions of Smith v. Lane); 
Mrs. Eddy's advice to, 56; 
their comfortable fortunes, 
57; their fees, 56, 83, 84; 
reasons of their objection to 
classification with physi- 
cians, 16. 

Churchy Mrs. Eddy's, 41; civil 
liability of Christian Scien- 
tists, (see Christian Scien- 
tists). 

Clairvoyance, is medical practice 
if coupled with material 
remedies, 81, 85; con- 
demned by Mrs. Eddy, 23, 

47. 

Cleanliness, discouraged, 20, 24. 

Clergy, formerly practiced physic 
and licensed physicians, 149. 

Clothing, unnecessary to Chris- 
tian Scientists, 25. 

"Coffee" Thomsonian remedy, 
71,72. 



Coggeshall, legislative bill of 
senator, 180. 

College, (Mrs. Eddy's), 50 to 
57; course of instnictioi , 
staff and fees, 51, 52; 
closed on account of pros- 
perity, 55; or anti-diploma 
law, 51; enormous success, 

54. 

College, Royal of Physicians, 
chartered, 148; by-laws, 
157; right to license, 158. 

Conjugal Rights, Mrs. Eddy's 
ideas of, 46, 47. 

Copyright, Mrs. Eddy's zeal for 
her, 47, 48, 49, 168; in- 
fringement of declared 
theft, 48. 

Constitutionality of health and 
medical laws, 14, 124. 

Contagious Diseases, duty to re- 
port, 31, 33, 86, 108, 120, 
181; exposure of children 
to, 26, 65, 103, 120. 

Crous, Jno. M., his hydro- 
phobia cure, 70. 

Cures, due to faith of mortal 
mind, 20; scandal, 78°; 
Mrs. Eddy's book, 47; of 
hayfever, heart disease and 
insanity, 3o n ; " dumpish- 
ness," 61; dropsy and in- 
fantile bowel complaint, 27; 
crushed foot, etc., 28, (see 
Cancer and Mrs. Eddy's ad- 
vertising methods). 

D 

Damages, (see civil liability). 

Danger of Eddyism, (see Chris- 
tian Science). 

Darwin, comparison of Mrs. 
Eddy with, 168. 

Death, certificates of, 86, 108, 
(see Manslaughter). 

Deformity, a belief, 22. 



186 



INDEX. 



Delilah, leads victims to Cer- 
berus, 58. 

Denf s case, 14. 

Dentistry, a branch of medicine, 
138, 139. 

Diagnosis, physicians err in, 12; 
immorality of medical, 24; 
Mrs. Eddy's certain, i6 n ; 
by Christian Scientists, i6 n , 
101; Mr. Norton's explana- 
tion of, 65, 170, (see Dis- 
cernment); need of, 22. 

Diet, care in, condemned i6 n , 
20; unscientific, 24. 

Diphtheria, exposure of children 
to by Faith curer, 26. 

Diplomas, poor standards of 
medical qualification, 128, 
141; Mrs. Eddy's scruples 
as to hers, 51; medical, 139 
seq. 

"Discernment," equivalent of, 
diagnosis, i6 n . 

Discord, the nothingness of 
error, 23; is discord, 171, 
(see Norton). 

Discovery, Mrs. Eddy's was 
"hopelessly original," 47. 

Disease, (see Norton). 

Diseases, conscious beliefs of 
unconscious mind, dream 
shadows and growths of 
illusion, 20, 22; feigned and 
self-limited, 66; non-exist- 
ent, 21; to be argued with, 
21, 22; cured by Mrs. 
Eddy's book, 21; mortal 
mind, 100; unintelligent, 21. 

Disingenuousness, of Christian 
Scientists, 104. 

Diss de Bar, the adventuress, 35. 

Draughts, "harmless to scien- 
tists," 25. 

Drea?ns, Mrs. Eddy's history a 
record of, 43, 44, 45. 

Dresser, H. W., Arena article on 
Mrs. Eddy, 38. 



Dropsy, cured by Mrs. Eddy, 

28. 
Drowsiness, caused by Mrs. 

Eddy's book, 3011, 61. 
Drugs, use of shows lack of 

faith in God, 24, 58. 
Druggist, (see Apothecary). 
Dying, restored to life, 28. 



E 



Eating, unnecessary, 29. 

Eclectics, (see Schools of Medi- 
cine). 

Eddy, Asa B., marriage to Mrs. 
Patterson, 44; first pupil of 
Mrs. Eddy to display sign 
of Christian Scientist, 45; 
death of from poison men- 
tally administered, 45 11 . 

Eddy, Ebenezer J. Foster, 52. 

Eddy, Mrs. Mary Baker Glover 
Patterson, autobiography, 
37; advertising methods, 
27, 28, 36, 6on, 61, 62; 
admitted to church, 41; 
advises disciples to charge 
fees, etc., 56; admits that her 
disciples are not fit to treat 
surgical cases, 28, 64, 172; 
boastfulness, 17, 18, 19,48, 
49» 5°» 57' certainty of 
diagnosis, i6n, 99; child- 
hood early studies, 40, 41, 
42, 99; compared with 
Cagliostro, 67; with Lydia 
Pinkham, 60; danger of her 
teachings, 37; disparage- 
ment and denunciation of 
P. P. Quimby and all sys- 
tems of treating the sick, 
23, 24, 38, 47; disdain of 
Lindley Murray, 43; dis- 
courages all study except 
of her book and the Bible, 



INDEX. 



187 



25, 54; Defines infringe- 
ment of her copyright as 
"theft," 48; experiments 
on herself with poisons, 
45 n ; forgets all she ever 
learned from books, 42; 
first person to interpret the 
scriptures, 48, 49; gains in 
substance, 50; forgets her 
grammar, 42, 43, 60; high 
potency homeopath, 16, 20, 
100; " hopelessly original," 
47; hears mystic voices, 40; 
humorous sense, 38; "in- 
telligent ease" in facing 
about, 39, 40; ignorance, 42, 
99; incoherence, 19; mar- 
riage, her views of, 46; un- 
necessary to procreation, 
46, 47; to Col. Glover, 42; 
to Mr. Eddy, 44; to Dr. 
Patterson, 43; her mar- 
riages were dreams and 
shadows that declined, 44; 
mathematical logic of her 
teaching, 40; her methods, 
21, 29, 82, 84, 101; 
"mother," her title of, 40; 
more than mortal, 40, 49; 
her poetry, 18, 36, 43, 59; 
her weird rhetoric, 58, 59; 
her spiritual grace of divine 
origin, 39; scriptures read 
through belief in eyesight, 
57 ; summary of her system, 
100, 104; shadow not grow- 
ing less, 50; separation of 
years from her child, 43; 
unselfishness in accepting 
large fees divinely sug- 
gested, 52, 53; teaches that 
prayer to personal God is 
injurious, 27; vagueness of 
thought and vulgarity of 
expression, 18, 19, 58; vin- 
dictiveness toward P. P. 
Quimby, 24, 38, (see 



Agnosticism, Certificates, 
Christian Science, College, 
Pantheism). 

Education, Mrs. Eddy's, lost 
upon discovery of Chris- 
tian Science, 42; unneces- 
sary, harmful and distaste- 
ful to "Scientists," 54, 
116; purpose of medical 
laws to ensure, 115, 175; 
(see medical laws and legis- 
lation) in England prior to 
apothecaries act, 156, (see 
Medical Education; Health, 
and Anatomy, Study). 

Electricity, administration of as a 
remedial agent is practice 
of medicine, 81. 

Eryximachns, cure of hic- 
coughs, medical theory of 
harmony, 23. 

Examinations, (see Medical 
Boards, etc.). 

Exercise, disapproved, 20, 24, 
47; does not increase mus- 
cular power, 24. 

Experience, medical treatment 
should accord with, 13, 73. 

Eyes, reading not done by, 57. 

P 

Faith, affects bodily con- 
dition, 12, 20. 

Faith Cure, ridiculed and con- 
demned by Mrs. Eddy, 38, 

47. 

Fear, affects body, 12. 

Fees, of Christian Scientists, 
56, 81, 83, 113; aid cure of 
the sick, 55; for Mrs. 
Eddy's tuition divinely in- 
spired, 52, 53; and un- 
selfishly accepted, 43; as 
element of medical prac- 
tice, no. 

Felony, intent as element of, J^ : 



188 



INDEX. 



77, (see Manslaughter and 
Suicide). 
Fever, Mrs. Eddy's, 41; Col. 
Glover* s death from in- 
sidious disease yellow fever, 

43- 
Fishbone, in child's throat as 

test of " Science," 65, (see 

Norton). 
Flannel, less protection than 

mind, 25. 
Food, not necessary to support 

life, 29; depriving a child 

of, criminal, 29. 
Fractures, cured by Mrs. Eddy, 

but to be avoided by her 

disciples, 28. 
Forgetfulness, Mrs. Eddy's, after 

discovering her * ' Science, ' ' 

42. 
Frederic, Harold, case of, 33, 

69. 

G 

Galileo, 12, 13. 

Garrison, Wm. Lloyd, 178. 

Gehazi, Christian Scientist, 
compared to, 84. 

Glover, Col. Geo. W., first hus- 
band of Mrs. Eddy, 42, 43. 

Godliness, mystery of unlocked, 
by Mrs. Eddy, 48; no mor- 
tal could have unlocked it, 

49- 

Gnosticism, confused with ag- 
nosticism, 42. 

Grammar, Mrs. Eddy's weak- 
ness in English, 42, 43, 60. 

Grocers, of same guild with 
apothecaries, 146. 

H 

Hahnemannism, decadence of, 
94, 176; differentiated from 
Christian Science, 176; high 
potency theory starting- 



point of Mrs. Eddy, 16, 100; 
properly ridiculed, 179. 

Hale, Lord, (see Manslaughter). 

Halford, Sir Henry, on apoth- 
ecaries act, 132. 

Harmony, Aristophanes and 
Eryximachus discuss, the 
somethingness of Truth, 
substitute for physiology, 

Healing sick, Christian Science 
has no distinct efficacy in, 
64. 

Health, treatises on cause sick- 
ness, 25, 47, 172; is Mind, 
100. 

Health Laws, purpose of, 14, 
(see Constitutionality, Leg- 
islation, Medical Laws). 

History, useless except to illus- 
trate truth, 46. 

Holmes, Dr. Oliver Wendell, on 
Berkeley, 13; Judge Oliver 
Wendell, (see Manslaugh- 
ter). 

Homeopathy, (see Hahneman- 
nism, Medical Schools);Mrs. 
Eddy's starting-point, 16, 
20, 100; denounced by Mrs. 
Eddy, 23; agrees with other 
medical systems in accept- 
ing the teachings of general 
science and reality of sick- 
ness, 176. 

Homeopathists, aid passage of 
N. Y. Medical Law, 95, 143; 
not to be classed with 
Christian Scientists, 117; 
dissensions among, 94, (see 
Schools of Medicine). 

Homicide, (see Manslaughter); 
compared with quack prac- 
tices, 125. 

Hope, affects body, 12. 

" Hopeless originality," of Mrs. 
Eddy's discovery, 47. 

Humor, Mrs. Eddy's, 38. 



I^DEX, 



189 



Humbug, of Christian Science, 
65, 101, 172. 

Hunger, a mental impression, 
29. 

Huntoon, Mehitable, hears mys- 
tic voices call Mary Baker, 
40. 

Hydrophobia, Crous's cure for, 
70. 

Hygiene, denounced by Mrs. 
Eddy, 16", 20, 24, 47. 



Ignorance, Mrs. Eddy's, exam- 
ples of, 18, 42, 43, 48, 59, 
60, 99. 

Illinois, Medical Laws of, 82 n , 

134. H2. 
Immortality, already here, 29. 
Incoherence, of Mrs. Eddy's 

writings, I9 n . 
Infants, folly of bathing, 24. 
Insanity, no defence of Christian 

Science, 32. 
Iowa, (see Manslaughter). 
Irish, happiness of emigrants in 

filth, 24. 



James, Professor, 178, 179. 
Jenkins, case of, 148. 
Jenner, 12, 13. 
Jesus, (see Christ). 

K 

Keithley's case, 74. 

Kerosene, malpractice by use 
of, 76. 

Kershaw's case, 69, (see Man- 
slaughter). 



Law, affects practices, not the- 
ories and religious beliefs, 



30, 34, 86, 96, (see Legisla- 
tion and Medical Laws). 

Laws, regulating medical prac- 
tice, reports of contagious 
diseases, etc., in New York, 
106. 

Legislation, Bentham on, 128; 
favorable to Christian Sci- 
ence, 33, 178 to 181; neces- 
sarily imperfect, 128; need 
of to control "Scientists" 
doubtful, 33, 90, 114, 180; 
not confined to exact sci- 
ences, 180; obstacles to 
medical, 137; purpose, 
scope and limits of, (see 
Law and Medical Laws). 

Liberty, Religious, (see Reli- 
gion). 

Liability, of Christian Scien- 
tists, (see, Penalties, Man- 
slaughter, Christian Scien- 
tists). 

License, to practice medicine, 
(see Medical Laws). 

Lobelia inflata, Thomsonian 
remedy, 72. 

Long, St. John, quack convicted 
of manslaughter, 31; ladies 
of rank testify to his cures, 
88. 

Lovett, Ezra, death from Thom- 
sonian treatment, 71, 72. 

Lunatic, anecdote of Bishop 
and, 63. 

M 

Malpractice, in medicine lia- 
bility for, 30, 109, in, 181, 
(see Manslaughter). 

Manslaughter, American rule, 
73; by Baunscheidtismus, 
75; constructive, by un- 
licensed medical practi- 
tioner, 31, 72, 74, 77; cases 
of Keithley and Rice, 74; 



190 



INDEX. 



of Lovett and Thomson, 
71, 72; Bemis and Pierce, 
76; by recklessness, 32, 72, 
y/ t 114, 125; by substitut- 
ing negations of Christian 
Science for right practice, 
32, 78, 114, 120, 166, 171, 
181; duty to deceased ele- 
ment of, 31, 33, 109, 112; 
English rule, 33. 

Hale, opinion of Lord, 72, yy\ 
Holmes, opinion of Judge, 
73 to 78; intent to cure 
consistent with criminality, 
73, yj\ by negligence, 32; 
offence against state gov- 
erned by different rule from 
that of civil liability, 112; 
victim's willingness to die, 
no defence, 126, (see Sui- 
cide). 

Marshrosemary, "coffee " of the 
Thomsonians, 72. 

Marriage, Mrs. Eddy's to Col. 
Glover a dream, 43, 44; to 
Dr. Patterson a shadow 
that declined, 44; to Mr. 
Eddy a blessed spiritual 
union, 44; unnecessary for 
procreation, 47; celibacy 
preferable, 46; convenient, 
pleasant or a love affair, 
46, (see Mrs. Eddy and 
Conjugal Rights). 

Martyrdom, cheap, a boon to the 
Scientists, 34, 182. 

Massachusetts Metaphysical 
college, (see College). 

Material History, only a dream, 

.44- 

Matter, non-existent, another 
name for mortal mind, 
21. 

Matteran, Q. C, on apothe- 
caries act, 161. 

Matthias, imposture and indict- 
ment of, 34, 35. 



Medical Boards of Examiners, 
in New York, 14, 15, 135, 
I44 n ; do not demand uni- 
formity in practice, 14, 15; 
suggested for Christian 
Science, 16, 116, 117; why 
not for Catholics and Prot- 
estants, etc., 121. 

Medical Education, (see Edu- 
cation, Study, Diplomas). 

Medical Laws, approval of by 
courts, 14, 124; argument 
against, 13; do not pre- 
scribe one system of prac- 
tice, 14, 15, 136, 140; en- 
forcment of, 86, 114, 129, 
130, 142, 162; petition for 
repeal of, N. Y., 89; pur- 
pose and scope of, 89, 114, 
123 seq., 134, 137,144, 175; 
widened by defining medi- 
cal practice will include 
Christian Scientists, 121; 
obstacles to enacting, 137. 

Medical Practice, (see Practice 
of Medicine). 

Medical Schools, (see Schools 
of Medicine). * 

Medical Societies, function of, 

133. 
Medical Study, impairs natural 

gifts of healers, 89; prereq- 
uisite to license, 15, 85; 
Mrs. Eddy's denunciation 
of, 25, 54; legal regulation 
of, 140, (see Education, 
Study). 

Medical Systems, (see Schools 
of Medicine). 

Medical Text-Books, cause dis- 
ease, 25. 

Medicine, administered by sci- 
entists, 16 n ; practice of, 
(see Practice); not an exact 
science, 12, 119; right of 
physicians to dispense, dis- 
puted, 147, 148; use of 



INDEX. 



191 



condemned by Mrs. Eddy, 
(see Drugs). 

11 Mediumship," denounced by 
Mrs. Eddy, 23. 

Mental stimulus, affects body, 
12. 

Mesmerism, denounced by Mrs. 
Eddy, 23. 

Midwifery, a branch of medi- 
cine, 139. 

Mind, (see Mortal Mind); regu- 
lates your childs stomach, 

25. 

Mind cure, denounced by Mrs. 
Eddy, 23, 47. 

Misdemeanor, unlicensed prac- 
tice of medicine may be in 
U. S., 36; is in New York, 
106; is not in England, 31; 
practice of Christian Sci- 
ence is not in N. Y., but is 
in Nebraska, 106. 

Missouri, (see Practice of Medi- 
cine). 

Mormon cases, 64, 86, 87. 

Mortal Mind, does not exist, 
29; another name for mat- 
ter, 21 ; is disease, 100. 

" Mother," title of Mrs. Eddy, 
40. 

Mothers, cause diseases of chil- 
dren by their thoughts, 25, 
169, 171. 

Mother's Darling, and Evening 
Prayer, poems of Mrs. 
Eddy, 43, 60. 

Movement cure, denounced, 

23. 47. 
Murder, malpractice may be, 

31, 78, 120. 
Murray, Lindley, grammar of, 

42, 43, (see Grammar). 

N 

Nebraska, medical practice in 
by " Scientists,* * 82. 



Negligence, (see Manslaughter). 

New York, Boards of medical 
examiners, 14, 15, 135, 
I44 n ; legislature of, buys 
hydrophobia cure, 70; 
practice of medicine in, 31, 
72, 82, (see Citations of 
Smith v. Lane). 

Nexus, importance of the, 46. 

Norton, Mr. Carrol, eulogy of 
Mrs. Eddy, 39; defines 
disease as disease, pain as 
pain, etc., 171; idea of 
diagnosis, 65, 171; lack of 
faith in his own teachings, 
64; lecture in Metropoli- 
tan Opera House, 64, 165; 
offers medical proof of cer- 
tain cures, 167; scouts idea 
that a child's malady is in 
the maternal mind, 169; 
"shelves" test questions, 
104, 113, 168, 169, 171; 
suggests comparison of 
Eddyism with philosophy 
of Darwin and Spencer, 
168. 

o 

Ohio, practice of medicine in, 
82. 

Ormonde, Marchioness of testi- 
fies for St. John Long, 89. 

Osteopathy, 81. 



Pain, a belief without adequate 
cause, 21; is pain, 171. 

Paine, Dr. H. M., reference to 
Mrs. Eddy's homeopathy, 
20^. 

Pantheism, Mrs. Eddy's under- 
standing of, 42. 

Patterson, Dr., Mrs. Eddy's 
second husband, 43, 44. 



192 



IKDEX. 



"Peculiar People/* deaths of 
children under their neg- 
lect, 87, 88. 

Penalties, amenability of "Scien- 
tists " malpracticing, etc., 
to, 31, 33, 109, 114, 181, 
(see Misdemeanor, and 
Practice of Medicine). 

Petition, for repeal of N. Y. 
Medical Law, 89. 

Pharmacy, a branch of medi- 
cine, 138, 139. 

Physical sense, is error and 
shadow, 50. 

Physic, less exact than surgery, 
136. 

Physician, dispensing of drugs 
by, 147 to 150; duty to ex- 
amine theories candidly 
without prejudice, 96, 137; 
may follow any system, 15; 
liability for malpractice, 31, 
33, 109, in, (see Man- 
slaughter); not infallible, 
12, 13, 119; should not be 
consulted by Christian 
Scientists, 23. 

Physiology, anti-Christian, 23; 
a cause of disease, 172; 
should be replaced by har- 
mony, 23. 

Pinkham, Lydia, Mrs. Eddy 
compared to, 60. 

Placenta pravia, 67. 

Poetry, Mrs. Eddy's i8 n , 36,43, 

59- 
Poison, mental administration of 

to Mr. Eddy, Mrs. Eddy's 
immunity to, Cagliostro's 
offer to swallow, 45. 

Police power, medical practice 
regulated under, 14. 

Policy of enacting laws against 
Christian Science, 90. 

Popham, Sir John, on medical 
practice of apothecary, 149. 

Practice of Medicine, by 



apothecaries, 132, 148, 
151, 155; defined in Eng- 
land, 160; in general, 106, 
108; Illinois, 82n; Indiana, 
80; Maine, Michigan and 
Missouri, 8 1 ; Nebraska, 
8.2; New York, 79; Ohio, 
82, 107; Rhode Island, 84, 
107; Wisconsin, 81; Mrs. 
Eddy's opinion of, 23. 

Prayer, to a personal God is in- 
jurious in science, 27. 

Predestination, rejected by Mrs. 
Eddy in childhood, 41. 

Prevention of Medical aid, (see 
Manslaughter). 

Prophylaxis, of Christian Sci- 
ence, 25. 

Public Health Laws, (see Med- 
ical Laws) in New York, 
106, 108. 

Publicity, will destroy Christian 
Science, 36, 98, 121, 182. 

Puffendorf, cites Cadis' judg- 
ment, 25, no. 

Q 

Quacks, their argument against 
Medical Laws, 13; com- 
pared with homicides, 125; 
pretences to peculiar gifts, 

8 5 . 

Quackery, (see Charlatan); not 
forbidden by law, in; in- 
crease of, in England, after 
Rose's case, 132. 

Quarles, on the good fortune of 
physicians, 102. 

Quimby, P. P., disparaged by 
his former patient, Mrs. 
Eddy, 24, 38. 



Ram-cats, Thomsonian rem- 
edy, 71. 






HSTDEX, 



193 



Reading, by belief in eyesight, 

57- 

Recklessness, in treating the 
sick, (see Manslaughter, 
Malpractice, Civil Liability); 
of " Scientists," 30°. 

Registration, of physicians, 141. 

Religion, not to be used to cloak 
crime, lust and greed, opin- 
ion of U. S. Supreme Court, 
30, 86, 87; of Nebraska 
Court, 84; Mrs. Eddy's, 
unimportant apart from its 
dangerous practices, 22, 63, 
ioo 7 102; not a test of med- 
ical skill, 13, 121; not as- 
sailed by preventing the ig- 
norant from treating the 
sick, 63. 

Retrospection and Introspection, 
Mrs. Eddy ' s autobiography , 

37- 

Rhetoric, Mrs. Eddy's wonder- 
ful, 58. 

Rhymes, Mrs. Eddy's, (see 
Poetry). 

Rubbing, denounced, 24. 

s 

Scandal Cure, j8 n . 

Science and Health with Key to 
the Scriptures, deeply dip- 
ping into last edition quali- 
fies to cure disease, 52; 
only text-book except Bible, 
54; drowsiness and vomit- 
ing caused by reading, 
3o n , 61. 

Science of Man, Mrs. Eddy's 
first book, cures from read- 
ing it, copyright infringed, 

47. 
V Schools " of Medicine, disap- 
pearance of differences with 
growth of exact knowledge, 
144; equality before the 



law, 134; differ from Chris- 
tian Science in accepting 
results of learning and ex- 
perience, 117, 136. 

Scriptures, inadequate prior to 
Mrs. Eddy's discovery, 48. 

Scruples, Mrs. Eddy's as to 
diplomas, 51. 

Senior, twice convicted of man- 
slaughter of his children by 
refusing medical aid, 88 n . 

Senses, their evidence not to be 
heeded, 57; error and 
shadow, 50. 

Sham, of Christian Science con- 
fessed by Mrs. Eddy, 28, 
65, 101, 172. 

Sickness is inharmony, 23, (see 
Disease). 

Simon, the sorcerer, Christian 
Scientists compared to, 82. 

Slander, to say a licensed prac- 
titioner has killed a patient 
by malpractice, 74. 

Smallpox, as a test of Christian 
Science, 65, 168, (see 
Norton). 

Socrates, 12, 13; ridicules pre- 
sumption of ignorance, 118. 

Soul, is substance, 50. 

Spencer, Herbert, comparison 
of Mrs. Eddy with, 168. 
itualism, denounced, 23. 

State Boards, of Medical Ex- 
aminers, (see Medical 
Boards); suggested for 
"Scientists," 16, 116, 117. 

Strangulation, of child a test of 
"Science," 65, 168, (see 
Norton). 

Study, of medicine causes dis- 
ease, 25; of general science 
condemned, 54; of Bible 
with science and health all 
sufficient, 54. 

Substance, is soul, 50. 

Suggestion, effects "cures" of 



194 



INDEX. 



Christian Science, 101, 104; 

children not subject to, 103; 

eliminated by Mrs. Eddy, 

104. 
Suicide, a felony to attempt, or 

aid, or abet, 33, 112. 
Surgeons, once barbers, 149. 
Surgery, more exact than 

physic, 136; to be avoided 

by Christian Scientists, 28. 
Systems, of medicine, (see 

Schools). 



TAR-water, Bishop Berkeley's, 

13. 

Tenement house, children ex- 
posed to contagion in, 26. 

Test questions, in Christian 
Science, (see Norton). 

Theft, infringement of Mrs. 
Eddy's copyright declared 
to be, 48. 

Therapeutics, no system favored 
by law, 14, 15, 136; should 
be based on experience, 
112; Mrs. Eddy's system 

Of, 21, 22, IO 



Thinkers, their time has come, 

IS- 

Thirst, a mental impression, 29. 

Thomson, Samuel, founder of 
" Botanic School," 71. 

Trades-union spirit, not scien- 
tific, 133, 156. 

V 

Vagueness, of Eddyism, 19". 
Vis medic atrix natures, force 

of, 12, 66. 
Vomiting, due to reading 

Science and Health, 30, 

61. 

W 

WelHny -gristle, Thomsonian 

remedy, 71. 
Woodbury, Mrs. J. C, article 

in Arena, 38. 
Worms, caused in children by 

maternal thought, 25. 



Yellow fever, an "insidious dis- 
ease," 41. 



M % 1900 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



in 

022 169 590.2 



